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Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, New York 

Nikolai Lenin 



LENIN 

The Man and His Work 

BY 

ALBERT RHYS WILLIAMS 

and the impressions of 

COL. RAYMOND ROBINS 

and 

ARTHUR RANSOME 



w 



New York 

SCOTT AND SELTZER 

1919 






Copyright, 1919, 
By Scott and Seltzer, Inc. 



All Rights Reserved 



DEC 22 1919 



Printed in the United States of America 



©CI.A559127 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Albert Rhys Williams 

Introduction ...... 9 

Biographical Sketch .... 23 

Ten Months with Lenin ... 43 

Raymond Robins 

Impressions, As Told to William 

Hard 125 

Arthur Ransome 

Lenin in 1 9 19 167 

Conservative Opinions on Lenin . . 191 

Two Adverse Opinions 196 

Lenin. By Anise t . 201 



INTRODUCTION 
By Albert Rhys Williams 

/. The First Wild Tales About Lenin 

The world knows very little of the man who 
for two years has been the Premier of Russia. 
The London Times says that this is due to the 
natural reticence and aloofness of Lenin. "If 
Lenin appears to the average Englishman as 
a red-shirted, high-booted pirate-chief, the 
fault is chiefly of his own making." 

Hardly. Lenin is not entirely to blame. 
The blockade and the British censorship have 
had considerable share in it. They completely 
severed Russia from the rest of the world. 
Even the Associated Press could not break 

9 



io INTRODUCTION 

through that censorship. It has never been 
accused of revolutionary leanings, but a large 
percentage of its mild cable despatches were 
regarded by the British as dangerous to the 
American people. The British held to be 
dangerous any facts that reflected favorably 
on the Soviet Government or its Premier. 

Consequently, in lieu of facts about Lenin 
the public was served with fancies and leg- 
ends by the "special correspondents" in Paris, 
London, Stockholm and Copenhagan. 

In one cabled despatch Lenin would appear 
in the morning narrowly escaping out of the 
clutch of the enemy by leaping from an ar- 
mored train in Siberia, while an afternoon 
despatch would reveal Lenin looking through 
the bars of his Moscow prison where he had 
been thrown and chained by the terrible 
Trotzky. The third, not to be outdone by this 
startling piece of news, would have Lenin with 
portfolio under his arm walking debonairly 
down the gang-plank of a Spanish steamer, 



INTRODUCTION 1 1 

landing at Barcelona. Individually the cor- 
respondents showed great inventive ingenuity 
but collectively they failed from lack of team- 
work. They proved too much. To flit from 
Siberia to Moscow and then to Spain in the 
course of a few hours is more than a human 
performance. Lenin's detractors endowed 
him with omnipresence. 

Earlier they had given him another attri- 
bute of Deity — omnipotence. For they said 
that Lenin through his coterie had organized 
the Soviets, and with them he had distilled 
poison into the minds of 15,000,000 soldiers 
and disintegrated the army. Then his little 
group had overthrown the Provisional Gov- 
ernment and had led by the nose a nation 
of 180,000,000 up to the Treaty of Brest- 
Litovsk and made them sign it. Such prowess 
is not of man — it is superhuman. 

He also seemed to be possessed of omni- 
science. There is more than a hint of it in the 
pitiful plaint of one of the factions pleading 



12 INTRODUCTION 

against going to Prinkipo: "We can't meet 
with Lenin. These Bolsheviks are clever 
rascals. They know everything in politics and 
economics, and they can out-talk us." Finally, 
immortalitv was his, too. Scores of times 
Lenin had been shot, yet he still lives. When 
devotees in the future set out to prove Lenin a 
god they will find abundant material in the 
papers of the last two years. 

Our own government took a hand in thick- 
ening the fog around Lenin by loosing those 
classics of official stupidity known as the 
Sisson documents. It was a lunatic attempt 
to prove that the world's most powerful enemy 
of Junkerism, the one man who had never let 
up in his war on Imperialism, was, in fact, 
the chief promoter of Junkerism and Imperi- 
alism — the Kaiser's own hired agent. 

Then followed the stories holding Lenin up 
to the reprobation of mankind as a cruel mon- 
ster thirsting for the blood of the bourgeoisie, 
callous to human suffering. On the one hand 



INTRODUCTION 13 

the famished Russians were pictured attack- 
ing with knives a horse or a dog dropped dead 
upon the streets, and bearing the smoking flesh 
away. On the other hand Lenin was pictured 
as a Mongolian monarch in the Kremlin 
surrounded by his Chinese mercenaries, liv- 
ing in Asiatic splendor, his fruit-bill alone 
amounting to more than 2,000 roubles a day. 
As some of the truth began to filter through 
the blockade these stories were too fantastic 
for even a credulous public and had to be 
retired. 

2. Other Misleading Stories About Lenin 

In their place has arisen a second series. 
They come from the too facile pens of writers 
like John Spargo and the Princess Radziwill. 
Some are pure fabrications, others have a 
basis in fact, but the venom of the writer en- 
tirely discolors the portrait. They make a 
show of being scientific, carrying an air of 
authority, bristling with "official documents" 



i 4 INTRODUCTION 

and the statements of "revolutionary leaders." 
The layman, having no way of verifying the 
facts in the case, accepts these versions as 
authentic. But again he has been led astray. 
For example, take the man Vladimir Burt- 
zev. On his statements John Spargo bases a 
great part of his Saturday Evening Post arti- 
cle on Lenin, while another writer hails 
Burtzev as "the old-time Revolutionist, the 
stern, whole-souled leader." Such a eulogy 
fits Burtzev of the past, but Burtzev like many 
others, when the Revolution arrived, turned 
reactionary. So reactionary in fact did he 
grow, so bitter did he become in his assaults 
upon the Kerensky government that he was 
arrested. Some time after the Bolsheviks 
came into power he was released and he went 
to Paris breathing out slaughter against his 
releasers. There he allied himself with the 
Kolchak crowd and the other reactionary 
groups carrying on a campaign to destroy the 
Revolution in Russia. Some of his best friends 



INTRODUCTION 15 

regarded him as insane in his onslaughts upon 
the revolutionary leaders. When Kerensky 
was the head of the Revolution, Burtzev led 
a furious attack against men like Verkhovsky, 
Kerensky's Minister of War. When Lenin 
became the leader of the Revolution he led an 
even more venomous attack against Lenin. 

In Paris, Burtzev, now blinded by rage, an 
open champion of Kolchak and Denikin, as- 
sembles the literary material for the assault 
on Lenin. John Spargo enrolls in the mud- 
slinging brigade and is duly supplied with 
"facts" and "documents." Consider the long 
route by which some of these "facts" have 
come: 

It is alleged that Lenin did something 
which came to the attention of Malinovsky, 
the agent provocateur. Malinovsky related 
this to Beletzky, the Chief of the Czar's Se- 
cret Police, imprisoned in the Fortress of 
Peter and Paul. Beletzky related this to 
Burtzev, now turned reactionary and im- 



16 INTRODUCTION 

prisoned in Peter and Paul. Burtzevvgoes 
to Paris and in a mood of rage and bitterness 
produces something which he said Beletzky 
told him that Malinovsky told him that Le- 
nin did. Spargo takes this diatribe, rewrites 
it and offers it to the American public as a 
true picture of Lenin. And yet along this 
chain there are at least three whose testimony 
would be ruled out of court as incompetent 
witnesses if not plain liars. 

No one would take as trustworthy evidence 
the words of this notorious agent of the Czar. 
If I were to believe anything that Beletzky 
said about Lenin I would believe what I got 
first-hand. 

With two other Americans in an Investi- 
gation Committee from the Petrograd City 
Duma, I visited Beletzky in his cell in Peter 
and Paul in December, 19 17. For an hour I 
listened, while he discoursed on revolutionists 
he had known. With a sneer in his voice 
and a leer in his eye he descanted on the 



INTRODUCTION 17 

venality of this one and the weakness of that 
one. Pretending to no ideals himself, he took 
great delight in pointing out the black and 
yellow spots upon these idealists supposed to 
be all white. One after another he be- 
smirched them, telling how this one had 
taken German money and the other one had 
proven a coward in a crisis. Then we brought 
up the name of Lenin. A complete change 
came over the face of the grizzled old wolf, 
the sneer went out of his voice, the leer left 
his eyes. Very quietly he said, "Lenin! A 
true revolutionist! An honest man!" 

J. Authors' Close Acquaintance With Lenin 

To turn from these fanciful stories of Lenin 
to the shortcomings of the present volume. 
It is unfinished. It makes no pretense of 
being a full survey of Lenin and his work. 
That can be made only in the perspective of 
history, and Lenin is still making history. 



1 8 INTRODUCTION 

But the glimpse it offers of the man and his 
work is, it is hoped, not without interest and 
significance. 

It shows Lenin in action, hard at work in 
the vortex of the Revolution. It records the 
impression made upon three foreigners who 
came into close relations with him. They 
have very distinct advantages over any 0/ ers 
who have written about Lenin. Nearly all the 
writers in the class mentioned above never 
spoke with Lenin, never heard him, never 
saw him, never came within a thousand miles 
of him. They have woven a great part of their 
stories out of rumor, phantasies and pure 
fiction. 

In this book the three men met Lenin, 
heard him speak, or talked with him person- 
ally week after week through the critical 
months of the Revolution. 

Colonel Raymond Robins, head of the 
American Red Cross Mission went to Lenin 
as a diplomat. He probably saw more of Le- 



INTRODUCTION 19 

nin than all the foreign diplomats of all the 
other Allied countries combined. 

Arthur Ransome went to Lenin as a jour- 
nalist. Knowing the language and the peo- 
ple, he had a remarkable background for un- 
derstanding the Revolution and its leader. 
He told me that he had performed the not 
inconsiderable task of reading all of Lenin's 
numerous volumes. 

For myself, I came to Lenin as a Social- 
ist from America. I rode on the same train 
with him, talked from the same platform, and 
lived with him in the National Hotel at Mos- 
cow for two months. In this book I give a 
series of contacts I had with him during the 
Revolution. 

Acknowledgment goes to the editors of 
Asia for the use of my article published in 
their August number. For the right to re- 
produce Arthur Ransome's material on Lenin 
I am indebted to B. W. Huebsch. It is but 
a few pages from that excellent book, "Rus- 



ao INTRODUCTION 

sia in 19 19." For the right to reproduce 
Raymond Robins' material I am indebted to 
Mr. William Hard and to Mr. Carl Hovey, 
editors of the Metropolitan. The significant 
articles which appeared in that magazine are 
to be published by Harper & Brothers, under 
the title "Raymond Robins' Own Story." It 
is a book that no one who wishes to under- 
stand the Russian situation can afford to miss. 
It is not only of the greatest permanent historic 
value, but is throughout as vivid, dramatic 
and as vital in its content as is the sketch of 
Lenin in this book. 

The facts for the outline of Lenin's life were 
obtained from the archives of the Moscow 
Okhrana. These archives of the Czar's Se- 
cret Police furnish authoritative records of 
the Russian revolutionists. The account of 
the execution of Lenin's brother is taken from 
"Russia's Ruin" by E. H. Wilcox. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
By Albert Rhys Williams 

/. His Early Days and Education 

The real name of the Premier of Russia 
is not Nikolai Lenin but Vladimir Ilyich 
Ulianov. He was born April 10, 1870, in 
Simbirsk, a province on the great river affec- 
tionately referred to by the Russians as the 
Mother Volga. 

In some accounts he is the "son of a peas- 
ant" ; in others he is the "son of a nobleman." 
Both statements are correct. 

In old Russia a man who became a senior 
captain in the navy, a colonel in the army or 
a Councillor of State in the Civil Service au- 

23 



24 LENIN 

tomatically attained the rank of the nobility. 
Lenin's father came from peasant stock and 
rose to the position of Councillor of State. 
So Lenin is referred to as the "son of a peas- 
ant" or the "son of a nobleman" according to 
the animus of the writer. Lenin's mother, 
Maria Alexandrovna, had a small estate in 
the Province of Kazan, and after her hus- 
band's death was in receipt of a pension. 

His father was master in a gymnasium and 
then inspector of schools. An enthusiast for 
education, he was everywhere fostering and 
encouraging intellectual interests. In his five 
children, three boys and two girls, he met with 
a wonderful response. Their home became a 
little university in itself, in which all were 
devoted to art and music and science and 
literature. This community of interest begot 
a warm and close family spirit. All the 
brothers and sisters were deeply attached to 
one another and to their parents. 

Sensitive to the things of the mind, they 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 25 

became likewise increasingly sensitive to the 
sufferings of the great masses. The beauty 
and interest of their own home life was such 
a contrast to the dullness and misery of the 
life of the millions around them groaning 
under the tyranny of Czardom. The joy in 
their own liberty was sullied always by the 
constant spectacle of slavery in the masses. 
Along with their passion for knowledge they 
began to develop an increasing passion for 
the people. One after another they committed 
themselves to the task of liberation and edu- 
cation of the workers and peasants. 

2. The Execution of Lenin's Brother 

On May 20, 1886, occurred a tragedy which 
is said to have made a profound impression 
on Lenin. His brother Alexander was hanged 
in the courtyard of the Schlusselburg Bas- 
tile. 

This brother was a young man of rare mind 



26 LENIN 

and character. He was a dreamer, a lover of 
music, often wandering through the woods or 
drifting in his boat down the Volga. He was 
also a hard worker and a brilliant student, al- 
ways at the head of his class and winning the 
gold medal of the gymnasium. 

With his sister Anna he went to the Uni- 
versity of St. Petersburgh. There he labored 
with extraordinary intensity, attending lec- 
tures, working in the laboratory, writing an 
essay on the visual organs of worms, winning 
a prize in zoology, devouring books on social 
sciences, drawing up a Party program, trans- 
lating a work on the philosophy of Marx, or- 
ganizing societies, agitating among the dock- 
laborers, helping poor students, even to the 
pawning of his gold medal. And his regret 
was that he could work but sixteen hours a 
day. 

All the time his rebellion against the tyranny 
of the Czar was growing. Outrage after out- 
rage drove him nearer to the camp of the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 27 

revolutionists. He organized a procession to 
pay honors to the grave of the poet Dobroliu- 
bov, but it was broken up on the Nevsky by a 
patrol of Cossacks and many students were 
arrested. Alexander thereupon joined "The 
People's Will," an association of terrorists. 
Their plot upon the Czar was discovered by 
the secret police and fifteen members were put 
on trial. 

"At his trial," Wilcox says, "Alexander re- 
fused legal aid and denied nothing that was 
said against him. Indeed, his chief desire 
seemed to be to shield those implicated with 
him. The Crown Counsel said of him, 'He 
admits himself guilty of everything, probably 
of what he did not do as well as what he did.' 
It is said that by thus taking blame of others 
on himself, he saved the life of one of his fel- 
low-conspirators. In his speech to the Court 
he declared his conviction that, in the con- 
ditions then existing in Russia, the Terror was 
the only possible method of political struggle. 



28 LENIN 

When the names of the five condemned to 
death were read, Alexander Ilyich Ulianov 
was among them. 

"While awaiting execution, his mother 
was allowed to visit him. The first time 
she came to see him he flung himself at 
her feet in tears and implored her to forgive 
him for the sorrow he had caused her. But 
he tried to prove to her that a man had higher 
duties than those that he owed to his parents, 
and that in Russia one of those duties was to 
fight for the political emancipation of the 
whole people. When she objected that his 
methods were terrible, he replied: 'But what 
is one to do if there are no others ?' His 
mother entreated him to petition for mercy; 
but this he steadfastly refused to do, saying 
that it would be insincere. 'I have tried to kill 
a human being,' he said, 'and therefore they 
must kill me.' 

"He showed great anxiety that all his out- 
standing obligations, even the most trifling 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 29 

ones, should be wiped out before he parted 
from life. Remembering that he owed an ac- 
quaintance thirty roubles, he asked his mother 
to redeem his gold medal and sell it to satisfy 
his debt. He also asked her to return to their 
owners certain borrowed books that were in 
his keeping. In his efforts to console her he 
reminded her that she would still have her 
other children, and especially the boy and girl 
w T ho came after him and who had both just 
finished their school courses with as much dis- 
tinction as he himself. And in this spirit he 
died on the Schlusselburg gallows. 

"The brother whom Alexander designated 
as his mother's comforter is the present Pre- 
mier of Russia, at that time seventeen years of 
age." 

J. Lenin as Student, Organizer and Exile 
in Siberia 

Lenin attended the Simbirsk Gymnasium, 
whose master was Feodor Kerensky, the father 



3 o LENIN 

of Alexander Kerensky, the Minister-Presi- 
dent of the Provisional Government. It 
doubtless never entered the head of this pro- 
vincial schoolmaster that his own son Alex- 
ander Kerensky was to rise to the highest post 
in all Russia. Nor in his wildest dreams 
could he have seen that this young member of 
the Ulianov family, this quiet, serious lad, 
would some day become Lenin, the man of 
iron will, the man who was to rise and take 
the power from his son and with iron nerve 
guide the destinies of Great Russia against a 
world of enemies. 

After graduating from the Simbirsk Gym- 
nasium Lenin entered the University of Ka- 
zan. His career here was short. He was 
expelled for preaching Socialism and taking 
part in a student rebellion. Later he was ad- 
mitted to the bar, but pleaded only one case. 

In 1 89 1 he turned from the provinces to 
the great metropolis upon the Neva. While 
studying law and economics at the University 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 31 

of Petersburgh he published a remarkable 
treatise upon Marxism which immediately 
established him as an authority. Plekhanov, 
the Father of Russian Socialism, on reading 
his manuscript, said, "Some day this young 
man will be dangerous." That was a pro- 
phetic word. About fifteen years later Lenin 
took the leadership of the Social-Democratic 
Party from the old veteran's hand and twenty- 
five years later ousted him from the Great 
Soviet Congress. 

But the Russian authorities right then, in 
1 89 1, thought him a very dangerous person- 
age. For from the beginning he was as ar- 
dent in life as in theory and plunged deep 
into the activities of the Socialist movement. 
Organizing the Union for the Liberation of 
the Artizan Class, he became a prominent 
workingmen's leader. 

But he took no lead in terrorist plots as had 
his brother Alexander, but devoted himself 
to instructing the workers in politics and eco- 



32 LENIN 

nomics. But to the Czar any champion of 
the people was perforce an enemy of the gov- 
ernment. Its heavy fist at last came down on 
Lenin. He was arrested, and by Imperial 
ukase, on January 29, 1897, was exiled to 
Eastern Siberia. 

With thousands of others, bravest and best 
of the children of Russia, he took the long 
trail that reaches out across the vast wastes of 
Asia. However, he did not let Siberia mean 
to him simply silence, snow and stagnation. 
It meant to him a rich opportunity to think 
and to study. In the village of Sushenskoy he 
gave himself to incessant work with brain and 
pen. Out of this came numerous works which 
appeared over the names of "Ilyich," "Ilin," 
"Tylin" and "Lenin." 

5. A Propagandist and Organizer in TLurope 

On the expiration of his sentence he was 
forbidden to reside in any of the large cities, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 33 

factory centers or university towns of Russia. 
So he slipped away from Russia and began 
his new career in Western Europe. With 
Plekhanov, Martov, Axelrod and Zasulich, he 
founded the paper Iskra, which soon became 
the active center for all the Russian Socialists 
in exile. In this circle of ardent revolution- 
ists Lenin developed his organizing ability. 
To this center came all the young people who 
wished to study to fit themselves for the work 
of liberation. From this center went out all 
the propaganda for the transformation of 
Russia. 

Tracked by all the European police in the 
service of the Okhrana, Lenin lived succes- 
sively in Munich, Brussels, Paris, London 
and Geneva, which he made his permanent 
home. His wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, was 
secretary of the Party. She almost ruined her 
health by the exhausting work of copying 
messages in cipher, all written out in invisible 
chemical ink. 



34 LENIN 

6. Lenin Becomes Leader of the Bolsheviks 

The Russian Social-Democratic Party was 
organized in 1898. At the Second Congress 
held at Brussels and London in 1903 came the 
famous breach in the Party. Lenin fought 
for a centralized party with a central body di- 
recting all activities. On this and other 
points he was bitterly opposed by a determined 
minority. Agreement was impossible, and the 
congress split into two factions : the Menshe- 
viki, which means literally "members of the 
minority," and the Bolsheviki, "members of 
the majority." (It must be remembered that 
to-day there is no such party in Russia as a 
Bolshevik party. In 19 18 the name of the 
party was officially changed to Communist. 
In this book the two names are used inter- 
changeably.) 

Lenin became the leader of the Bolsheviks. 
All the old-time celebrities, including Plekha- 
nov, voted with him. Afterwards they went 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 35 

over to the Mensheviks and became his an- 
tagonists. Although alone in a strange land, 
without a paper, with no means of action, 
Lenin did not lose courage. He published a 
book called "Economic Studies," which had 
a large success in Russia. With the money 
which this book brought him and with the 
help of Lunacharsky, Bogdanov and Vorovsky 
he founded a new paper, Forward. 

At the congress of 1904, when the revolu- 
tionary movement was re-awakening in Rus- 
sia, Lenin introduced all the questions which 
he was to solve later as chief of the Soviet 
government — dictatorship of the proletariat, 
confiscation of capitalist property, the devel- 
opment of revolutionary action even to its ex- 
treme limits, preparation of the Russian 
Revolution as a prelude to the International 
Socialist Revolution. 

In 1905, when the first Russian Revolution 
broke out, Lenin, receiving amnesty, returned 
to his country. When the forces of reaction 



36 LENIN 

were again in the saddle he fled to Finland 
(1906), then to Switzerland (1907), and to 
Paris (1908). He brought out two papers, 
The Social Democrat, a propaganda paper, 
and The Proletariat, a more theoretical jour- 
nal. He settled with his co-workers at Cra- 
cow, near the Russian frontier, where he 
could keep in touch with the revolutionists 
and direct their movements. 

7. Lenin As a Scholar and Author 

Besides these propaganda activities Lenin 
did a man's work in many other fields. Wil- 
cox, the English writer, says of him, "Like 
Karl Marx, he was never happier than when 
exploring the treasures of the British Mu- 
seum. This institution, one of his friends has 
told us, he regarded with enthusiastic admira- 
tion. His eyes always shone when he spoke 
of it, and it was his fondest dream to live near 
it. It was here that he found his favorite 
recreation." 






BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 37 

He made an excellent translation of Sidney 
and Beatrice Webb's industrial Democra- 
cy." His own original works may be num- 
bered by the score. The following are im- 
portant: 

Development of Capitalism in Russia/ 9 
Economic Sketches and Essays" "What Is 
To Be done? The Painful Problems of Our 
Movement" "One Step Forward, Two Steps 
Backward: The Crisis in Our Party" 
"Twelve Years: Two Trends in Russian 
Marxism; The Agrarian Problem" "Materi- 
alism and Empiro criticism: Critical Remarks 
to a Reactionary Philosophy " "Imperialism 
as the Last Stage of Capitalism" "The State 
and Revolution." 

Unfortunately at the present time there are 
very few- translations of Lenin's works in 
English. A number of his recent speeches 
and papers have been gathered into a well- 
edited volume, entitled "The Proletarian 
Revolution" published by The Communist 



3 8 LENIN 

Press, New York. A pamphlet called "The 
Soviets at Work/' published by the Rand 
School, New York, gives an insight into the 
constructive genius of Lenin's mind. 

8. His Return to Russia Through Germany 

The outbreak of the great war found Lenin 
in Austria trying to stir the workers to rebel- 
lion. He was imprisoned but released, thanks 
to the action of the French Socialists. He re- 
turned to Switzerland, and there took up the 
fight for peace and the International. He 
took a very active part in the organization of 
the Zimmerwald Conference. In April-May, 
19 1 7, after the fall of Czarism, he wished to 
return to Russia. The Allied governments 
opposed this. He then accepted the proposals 
of the Swiss Socialist Party. The Federal 
Councillor Platen and others made the neces- 
sary plans, and he was allowed to pass through 
Germany accompanied by one hundred revo- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 39 

lutionists of all factions. This fact has been 
cited as proof that the Bolsheviks were Ger- 
man agents. It should be remembered that in 
this same train went scores of Socialist Revo- 
lutionists and Mensheviks, notably Axelrod 
and Martov, the bitter opponents of Lenin 
and the Bolsheviks. On his arrival at Petro- 
grad, the people, the army and the navy gave 
him a triumphal reception. 

From that time the story of Lenin blends 
with that of the Russian Revolution itself. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 
By Albert Rhys Williams 

I. Young Disciples of Lenin 

I SAW Lenin first not in the flesh but in the 
minds and spirits of five young Russian work- 
ingmen. They were part of the great tide of 
exiles flowing back into Petrograd in the 
summer of 1917. 

Americans were drawn to them by their 
energy, intelligence and their knowledge of 
English. They soon informed us that they 
were Bolsheviks. "They certainly don't look 
it," said an American. For a time he would 
not believe it. He had seen in the paper the 
picture of the Bolsheviks as long-bearded, 

43 



44 LENIN 

ignorant, indolent ruffians. And these men 
were clean-shaven, polite, humorous, amiable 
and alert. They were not afraid of responsi- 
bility, not afraid to die, and most marvellous 
of all in Russia, not afraid to work. And 
they were Bolsheviks. 

Woskov hailed from New York, where he 
had been the organizer of the Carpenters' and 
Joiners' Union, Number 1008. Yanishev, a 
mechanic, the son of a village priest, bore on 
his body the marks of labor in mines and mills 
all around the world. Niebut, an artizan, al- 
ways carried a pack of books and was always 
enthusiastic over his latest find. Volodarsky, 
working day and night like a galley slave, said 
to me a few weeks before he was assassinated, 
"Oh, what of it! Supposing they do get me! 
I have had more joy working these last six 
months than any five men ought to have in all 
their lives." Peters, a foreman, who later 
appeared in the press reports as a bloody 
tyrant signing death-warrants until his fingers 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 45 

could no longer hold the pen, was often sigh- 
ing for his English rose-garden and the poems 
of Nekrasov. 

These men quietly assured us that, in brains 
and character, Lenin led not only all the Bol- 
sheviks, but everybody else in Russia, in Eu- 
rope and in all the world. 

For us who daily read in the papers of 
Lenin, the German agent, and daily heard the 
bourgeoisie outlaw him as a scoundrel, a 
traitor, and an imbecile, this was indeed 
strange doctrine. It sounded fantastic and fa- 
natical. But these men were neither fools nor 
sentimentalists. Knocking about the world 
had hammered all that out of them. Nor were 
these men hero-worshippers. The Bolshevik 
movement was elemental and passionate, but 
it was scientific, realistic, and uncongenial to 
hero-worship. Yet here was this quintette of 
Bolsheviks declaring that there was one Rus- 
sian, great in integrity and in intelligence, and 
his name was Nikolai Lenin, at that time an 



46 LENIN 

outlaw hunted by the Provisional Govern- 
ment. 

The more we saw of these young zealots 
the more we desired to see the man they ack- 
nowledged as their master. Would they take 
us to his hiding-place? 

"Wait a little while," they would reply, 
laughing, "then you shall see him." 

Impatiently we waited through the summer 
and into the fall of 191 7, watching the Ker- 
ensky Government grow weaker and weaker. 
On November 7 the Bolsheviks pronounced it 
dead and at the same time proclaimed Russia 
to be a Republic of Soviets with Lenin as its 
Premier. 

2. First Impression of Lenin 

While a tumultuous, singing throng of 
peasants and soldiers, flushed with the triumph 
of their revolution, jammed the great hall at 
Smolny, while the guns of the Aurora were 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 47 

heralding the death of the old order and the 
birth of the new, Lenin quietly stepped upon 
the tribunal and the Chairman announced, 
"Comrade Lenin will now address the Con- 
gress." 

We strained to see whether he would meet 
our image of him, but from our seats at the 
reporters' table he was at first invisible. 
Amidst loud cries, cheers, whistles and stamp- 
ing of feet he crossed the platform, the demon- 
stration rising to a climax as he stepped upon 
the speaker's rostrum, not more than thirty 
feet away. Now we saw him clearly and our 
hearts fell. 

He was almost the opposite of what we 
had pictured him. Instead of looming up 
large and impressive he appeared short and 
stocky. His beard and hair were rough and 
unkempt. 

After stilling the tornado of applause he 
said, "Comrades, we shall now take up the 
formation of the Socialist State." Then he 



48 LENIN 

went into an unimpassioned, matter-of-fact 
discussion. In his voice there was a harsh, 
dry note rather than eloquence. Thrusting 
his thumbs in his vest at the arm-pits, he 
rocked back and forth on his heels. For an 
hour we listened, hoping to discern the hid- 
den magnetic qualities which would account 
for his hold on these free, young, sturdy spir- 
its. But in vain. 

We were disappointed. The Bolsheviks 
by their sweep and daring had captured our 
imaginations; we expected their leader to do 
likewise. We wanted the head of this party 
to come before us, the embodiment of these 
qualities, an epitome of the whole movement, 
a sort of super-Bolshevik. Instead of that, 
there he was, looking like a Menshevik, and 
a very small one at that. 

"If he were spruced up a bit you would 
take him for a bourgeois mayor or banker of 
a small French city," whispered Julius West, 
the English correspondent. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 49 

"Yes, a rather little man for a rather big 
job," drawled his companion. 

We knew how heavy was the burden that 
the Bolsheviks had taken up. Would they be 
able to carry it? At the outset, their leader 
did not strike us as a strong man. 

So much for a first impression. Yet, start- 
ing from that first adverse estimate, I found 
myself six months later in the camp of Wos- 
kov, Niebut, Peters, Volodarsky and Yani- 
shev, to whom the first man and statesman of 
Europe was Nikolai Lenin. 

3. Lenin Injects Iron Discipline into the 

State Life 

On November 9th I desired a pass to ac- 
company the Red Guards then streaming out 
along all roads to fight the Cossacks and the 
counter-revolutionists. I presented my cre- 
dentials bearing the signature of Hillquit and 
Huysmans. I thought they were a very im- 



50 LENIN 

posing set of credentials. But Lenin didn't. 
Quite as if they came from the Union League 
Club, he handed them back with a laconic, 
"No." 

This was a trivial incident, but indicative 
of a new, rigorous attitude now appearing in 
the councils of the proletarians. Hitherto, to 
their own destruction, the masses had been in- 
dulging their excessive amiability and good 
nature. Lenin set out for discipline. He 
knew that only strong, stern action could save 
the Revolution, menaced by hunger, invasion 
and reaction. So the Bolsheviks drove their 
measures through without ruth or hesitation, 
while their enemies ransacked the arsenals of 
invective for epithets to assail them. To the 
bourgeoisie Lenin was the high-handed, iron- 
fisted one. At this period they referred to 
him not as Premier Lenin, but as "the Tyrant 
Lenin," "Lenin the Dictator." And the Right 
Socialists said, the old Romanov Tsar, Nicho- 
las II, has given place to the new Tsar, Niko- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 51 

lai Lenin, and in derision shouted, "Long 
live our new Tsar Nicholas III!" 

They seized with joy upon the humorous 
incident of the peasant. It was the night 
when the Soviet of Peasants' Deputies, throw- 
ing its support to the new Soviet government, 
celebrated with a glorified love-feast in the 
halls of Smolny. The intelligentzia had 
spoken for the village; there was a demand 
that the village should speak for itself. An 
old fellow in peasant's smock came to the plat- 
form. His face showed rosy through his 
white beard ; he had twinkling eyes, and spoke 
in the village dialect. 

"Tovarishchi, how happy I was tonight as 
we came here with banners flying and mu- 
sic playing. I didn't come walking on the 
ground. I came flying through the air. I am 
one of the dark people, living in a dark vil- 
lage. You gave us the light. But we don't 
understand it all, so they sent me here to find 
out. But, Tovarishchi, we are all very happy 



5 2 LENIN 

over the wonderful change. In the old days 
the chinovniki used to be very hard and beat 
us, but now they are very polite. In the old 
days we could only look at the outsides of the 
palaces, now we can walk right inside them. 
In the old days we only talked about the Tsar, 
but they tell us now, Tovarishchi, tomorrow 
I can shake hands with Tsar Lenin himself. 
God grant him long life!" 

The audience exploded. Astounded at the 
roars of laughter and applause, the old peas- 
ant sat down. But the next day he was pre- 
sented to Lenin, and later was the peasants' 
representative at Brest-Litovsk. 

During these chaotic weeks only iron will 
and iron nerve would suffice. Rigid order 
and discipline were evident in all depart- 
ments. One could note the stiffening of the 
morale of the workingman, a tightening up of 
the loose parts in the Soviet machinery. Now 
when the Soviet moved out into action, as for 
example in the seizure of the banking sys- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 53 

tern, it struck hard and effectively. Lenin 
knew where to be precipitate in action, but he 
knew also where to go slow. A delegation 
of workingmen came to Lenin asking him if 
he could decree the nationalization of their 
factory. 

"Yes," said Lenin, picking up a blank form, 
"it is a very simple thing, my part of it. All 
I have to do is to take these blanks and fill in 
the name of your factory in this space here, 
and then sign my name in this space here, and 
the name of the commissar here." The work- 
men were highly gratified and pronounced it 
"very good." 

"But before I sign this blank," resumed 
Lenin, "I must ask you a few questions. 
First, do you know where to get the raw ma- 
terials for your factory?" Reluctantly they 
admitted they didn't. 

"Do you understand the keeping of ac- 
counts," resumed Lenin, "and have you 
worked out a method for keeping up produc- 



54 LENIN 

tion?" The workmen said they were afraid 
they did not know very much about these 
minor matters. 

"And finally, comrades," continued Lenin, 
"may I ask you whether you have found a 
market in which to sell your products?" 

Again they answered, "No." 

"Well, comrades," said the Premier, "don't 
you think you are not ready to take over your 
factory now? Go back home and work over 
these matters. You will find it hard; you 
will make many blunders, but you will learn. 
Then come back in a few months and we can 
take up the nationalizing of your factory." 

4. Iron Discipline in Lenin's Personal Life 

The same iron that Lenin was injecting into 
the social life he showed in his individual 
life. Shchi and borshch, slabs of black bread, 
tea and porridge made up the fare of the 
Smolny crowds. It was likewise the usual 
fare of Lenin, his wife and sister. For twelve 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 55 

and fifteen hours a day the revolutionists 
stuck to their posts. Eighteen and twenty 
hours was the regular stint for Lenin. In his 
own hand he wrote hundreds of letters. Im- 
mersed in his work, he was dead to every- 
thing, even his own sustenance. Grasping her 
opportunity when Lenin was engaged in con- 
versation his wife would appear with a glass 
of tea, saying, "Here, tovarishch, you must 
not forget to drink this." Often the tea was 
sugarless, for Lenin went on the same ration 
as the rest of the population. The soldiers 
and messengers slept on iron cots in the big, 
bare, barrack-like rooms. So did Lenin and 
his wife. Wearied, they flung themselves 
down on their rough couches, oftentimes with- 
out undressing, ready to rise to any emer- 
gency. Lenin did not take upon himself these 
privations out of any ascetic impulses. He was 
simply putting into practise the first princi- 
ple of Communism. 

One of these principles was that the pay 



56 LENIN 

of any Communist official should be no larger 
than the pay of an average workingman. It 
was fixed at a maximum of 600 rubles a 
month. Later there was an increase. As it 
is to-day, the Premier of Russia receives less 
than $200 a month. 

I was in the National Hotel when Lenin 
took a room on the second floor. The first 
act of the new Soviet regime was the abolition 
of the elaborate and expensive menus. The 
many dishes that comprised a meal were cut 
down to two. One could have soup and meat 
or soup and kasha. And that is all that any- 
one, whether Chief Commissar or kitchen- 
boy, could have, for it is written in the creed 
of the Communists that "No one shall have 
cake until everybody has bread." On some 
days there was very little even of bread for 
the people. Still each person got just as much 
as Lenin. Occasionally there were days with- 
out any bread at all. Those days, too, were 
breadless days for him. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 57 

When Lenin was near death in the days fol- 
lowing the attempt upon his life, the physi- 
cians prescribed some food not obtainable on 
the regular food-card and which could be 
bought only in the market from some specu- 
lator. In spite of all the entreaties of his 
friends, he refused to touch anything which 
was not part of the legitimate ration. 

Later when Lenin was convalescing his 
wife and sister hit upon a scheme for increas- 
ing his nutriment. Finding that he kept his 
bread in a drawer, in his absence they slipped 
into his room and now and then added a piece 
to his store. Absorbed in his work, Lenin 
would reach into the drawer and take a bit, 
which he ate quite unconscious that it was any 
addition to the regular ration. 

In a letter to the workers of Europe and 
America, Lenin wrote: "Never have the 
Russian masses suffered such depths of mis- 
ery, such pangs of hunger as those to which 
they are now condemned by the military in- 



5 8 LENIN 

tervention of the Entente!" But these same 
sufferings Lenin was enduring along with the 
masses about whom he writes. 

Lenin has been accused of gambling with 
the life of a great nation, an experimentalist 
recklessly trying out his communistic formu- 
las upon the sick body of Russia. But he 
cannot be accused of lack of faith in those 
formulas. He not only tries them on Russia. 
He tries them on himself. He is willing to 
take his own medicine. To pay homage to 
the doctrines of Communism from a distance 
is one thing. To endure, as does Lenin, the 
privations and rigors that the introduction of 
Communism entails on the spot is a vastly dif- 
ferent thing. 

Starting a communistic state should not, 
however, be portrayed entirely in sombre col- 
ors. In the darkest days in Russia, art and 
the opera flourished. Romance, too, played 
its part. It touched even the chief characters 
of the revolutionary stage. We were as- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 59 

tounded to find one morning that the versatile 
Kollontay had married the sailor Dybenko. 
Later, for ordering a retreat before the Ger- 
mans at Narva, he came under censure. In 
disgrace he was expelled from office and 
party, Lenin approving and Kollontay natu- 
rally resentful. 

Talking with her at this juncture I suggest- 
ed that Lenin might have gone the way of all 
flesh, the poison of power entering his veins 
and inflating his ego. "Bitter as I feel now," 
she answered, "I couldn't think of imputing 
any action of his to personal motives. No one 
of the comrades who had worked with Com- 
rade Lenin for ten years could believe that 
there was a single drop of selfishness in 
him." 

5. Practise of Communism Rallies the 
People to the Soviet 

Lenin was of course pictured in the bour- 
geois press as the opposite of this. A fiend 



60 LENIN 

incarnate, a selfish, grasping monster. But 
gradually the real Lenin emerged from this 
shroud of lies. And as the news spread 
through Russia that Lenin and his colleagues 
were taking pot-luck with the people, the 
masses rallied around them. 

The miner in the Urals, inclined to grum- 
ble at his meagre ration, remembers that each 
one draws alike from the common store of 
food and clothes and shelter. Why, then, 
should he grumble at his morsel of black 
bread? At any rate it is as large as Lenin's. 
The rankling pangs of injustice are not added 
to the pangs of hunger. 

The peasant wife shivering in the icy blasts 
that sweep off the Volga knows little of the 
man who has taken the place of the Czar. 
But she hears that he often has an unheated 
room. Now though she suffers from the cold 
she does not suffer from the inequalities of 
life. 

The engineer at Nizhni, finding the six 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 61 

hundred rubles in the pay-envelope woefully 
inadequate to cover the needs of his family, 
begins to be bitter. Then he recollects that 
the man in the Kremlin draws no more. That 
helps to take the rancor away. 

The Soviet soldier facing the drum-fire of 
the Allied guns knows that Lenin is also on 
the firing line though he is in the rear. For 
danger, like everything else in Russia, has 
been socialized. No one is immune from it. 
The percentage of Soviet leaders killed and 
wounded at the front. Uritzky, Volardsky 
percentage of Soviet soldiers killed and 
wounded at the front. Uritsky, Voladarsky 
and scores of others have been assassinated 
while Lenin's body has twice stopped the as- 
sassin's bullets. To the Red Soldier Lenin 
then is not someone aloof from the fray, but 
a comrade-in-arms sharing the risks and 
hardships of the campaign. 

The American Mission to Russia report by 
Bullitt says : 



62 LENIN 

"Lenin today is regarded as almost a 
prophet. His picture, usually accompanied 
by Karl Marx's, hangs everywhere. When I 
called on Lenin at the Kremlin I had to wait 
a few minutes until a delegation of peasants 
left his room. They had heard in their vil- 
lage that Comrade Lenin was hungry. And 
they had come hundreds of miles carrying 
eight hundred puds of bread as the gift of 
the village to Lenin. Just before them was 
another delegation of peasants to whom the 
report had come that Comrade Lenin was 
working in an unheated room. They came 
bearing a stove and enough firewood to heat it 
for three months. Lenin is the only leader 
who receives such gifts. And he turns them 
into the common fund." 

Sharing alike in the common wealth and 
the common dearth created a common bond of 
sympathy running from Premier to poorest 
peasant, bringing to the Soviet leaders the in- 
creasing support of the people. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 63 

6. Practice of Communism Gives Lenin 
the Pulse of the People 

Living so close to the people, the Communist 
leaders knew the ebb and flow of popular 
feeling. 

Lenin did not need to send out a commis- 
sion to discover the sentiments and psychology 
of the people. A man going without food 
doesn't have to speculate upon the mood of a 
hungry man. He knows. Hungering with 
the people, freezing with the people, Lenin 
was feeling their feelings, thinking their 
thoughts, and voicing their desires. 

Now this is precisely the way in which the 
Communist Party claims to function — as an 
instrument directly reflecting the thoughts of 
the masses and as a mouthpiece articulating 
them. 

The Communists say: "We did not cre- 
ate the Soviets. They sprang out of the 
life of the people. We did not hatch up some 



64 LENIN 

program in our brains and then take it out 
and superimpose it upon the people. Rather 
we took our program directly from the peo- 
ple themselves. They were demanding 'Land 
to the Peasants,' 'Factories to the Workers,' 
and 'Peace to All the World.' We wrote these 
slogans upon our banners and with them 
marched into power. Our strength lies in our 
understanding of the people. In fact, we do 
not need to understand the people. We 
are the people." This was certainly true 
of the rank and file of the leaders, who, 
like the five young Communists we first met 
in Petrograd, were flesh and bone of the 
people. 

But intellectuals like Lenin — how can they 
speak for the people? How can they under- 
stand the hearts and minds of the masses? The 
answer is that they never can. That is cer- 
tain. But it is equally certain, as Tolstoy 
showed, that he who lives the life of the peo- 
ple gets closer than he who holds himself 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 65 

aloof from their struggles. So Lenin had one 
great advantage over his opponents. He did 
not have to guess about the feelings of the 
Ural miner, the Volga peasant or the Soviet 
soldier. He knew them, approximately, at 
any rate. For their experiences were his ex- 
periences. So while his opponents were 
fumbling in the dark, Lenin drove ahead with 
the assurance of the man who knows his 
ground. 

This practice of communism by the Soviet 
leaders is one of the powerful factors in ral- 
lying strength to the Soviet government. Out- 
side Russia this fact has been passed over, or 
it has been minimized. Lenin, however, did 
not minimize it. He held it to be essential in 
the Soviet system. In the vortex of events he 
took time to write, in the "State and Revolu- 
tion," an exposition upon the practice of com- 
munism as the true road for proletarian 
statesmen to take. It is a hard road. There 
are few that follow in it. 



66 LENIN 

7. Lenin in Public Address 

Despite these rigors and the drain of this 
day and night ordeal, Lenin appeared con- 
stantly upon the platform, concise, alert, diag- 
nosing the conditions, prescribing the reme- 
dies, and sending his listeners into action to 
administer them. Observers have wondered 
at the enthusiasm which Lenin's addresses 
roused in the uneducated class. While his 
speeches were swift and fluent and crowded 
with facts, they were generally as unpictu- 
resque and unromantic as his platform ap- 
pearance. They demanded sustained thought 
and were just the opposite of Kerensky's. 
Kerensky was a romantic figure, an eloquent 
orator, with all those arts and passions which 
should have swayed, one would think, "the ig- 
norant and illiterate Russians." But they were 
not swayed by him. Here is another Russian 
anomaly. The masses listened to the flashing 
sentences and magnificent periods of this bril- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 67 

liant platform orator. Then they turned 
around and gave their allegiance to Lenin, the 
scholar, the man of logic, of measured thought 
and academic utterance. 

Lenin is a master of dialectics and polem- 
ics, aggravatingly self-possessed in debate. 
And in debate he is at his best. Olgin says: 
"Lenin does not reply to an opponent. He 
vivisects him. He is as keen as the edge of a 
razor. His mind works with an amazing 
acuteness. He notices every flaw in the line of 
argument. He disagrees with, and he draws 
the most absurd conclusions from, premises 
unacceptable to him. At the same time he is 
derisive. He ridicules his opponent. He cas- 
tigates him. He makes you feel that his vic- 
tim is an ignoramus, a fool, a presumptuous 
nonentity. You are swept by the power of his 
logic. You are overwhelmed by his intellec- 
tual passion." 

Occasionally he relieves the march of his 
argument by a bit of humor or a stinging re- 



68 LENIN 

tort as: "Comrade Karellin's queries remind 
me of the adage, 'One fool can ask more ques- 
tions than ten wise men can answer.' " Again, 
when Radek, the Bolshevik journalist, turned 
once on Lenin saying, "If there were five 
hundred brave men in Petrograd we would 
send you to jail," Lenin quietly replied, 
"Some comrades indeed may go to jail, but 
if you will calculate the probabilities you 
will see that it is more likely that I will send 
you than you me." Occasionally he would 
bring in a homely incident illustrating the 
new order: the old peasant woman gathering 
firewood in the landlord's forest with the sol- 
dier of the new day acting as her protector 
instead of her persecutor. 

Under suffering and the stress of events the 
fire and passion which lies in the man seemed 
to have broken through the usual reserve. A 
recent observer says that in a great meeting 
Lenin began with sentences somewhat halting 
and heavy, but as he got under way he spoke 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 69 

more clearly. He became fluent and viva- 
cious, without much external effort but with 
an increasing internal agitation that was more 
and more effective. a A sort of controlled 
pathos pervaded his soul. He used many 
gestures and kept walking a few steps back- 
ward and forward. Remarkably deep and ir- 
regular wrinkles formed upon his brow, giv- 
ing evidence of an intensive pondering, an al- 
most tormenting labor of intellect." Lenin 
aimed primarily at the intellect, not at the 
emotions. Yet in the response of his audience 
one could see the emotional power of sheer 
intellectuality. 

Only once did I see him miss fire. That 
was at the Mikhailovsky Manege, in De- 
cember, when the first detachment of the new 
Red Army was leaving for the front. Flar- 
ing torches lit up the vast interior, turning the 
long lines of armoured cars into a group 
of strange primeval monsters. Swarming 
through the great arena and clambering over 



7 o LENIN 

the cars were the dark figures of the new re- 
cruits, poorly equipped in arms, but strong 
in revolutionary ardor. To keep warm they 
danced and stamped their feet and to keep 
good cheer they sang their revolutionary 
hymns and the folksongs of the villages. 

A great shout announced the arrival of 
Lenin. He mounted one of the big cars and 
began speaking. In the half darkness the 
throngs looked up and listened attentively. 
But they did not kindle to his words. He fin- 
ished amidst an applause that was far from 
the customary ovation. His speech that day 
was too casual to meet the mood of men going 
out to die. The ideas were commonplace and 
the expressions trite. There was reason 
enough for this deadness — overwork, preoc- 
cupation. But the fact remained. Lenin had 
met a significant occasion with an insignifi- 
cant speech. And these workmen felt it. 
The Russian proletarians are not blind hero- 
worshippers. One cannot long capitalize 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 71 

one's past exploits and prestige, as the Grand- 
father and the Grandmother of the Revolu- 
tion discovered. If one did not acquit oneself 
like a hero now, one did not get the hero's 
meed of plaudits. 

When Lenin stepped down, Podvoisky an- 
nounced, "An American comrade to address 
you." The crowd pricked up its ears and I 
climbed upon the big car. 

"Oh, good. You speak in English," said 
Lenin. "Allow me to be your interpreter." 

"No, I shall speak in Russian," I answered, 
prompted by some reckless impulse. 

Lenin watched me with eyes twinkling, as 
if anticipating entertainment. It was not long 
in coming. After using up the first run of 
predigested sentences that I always carried in 
stock, I hesitated, and stopped. I had diffi- 
culty in getting the language started up again. 
No matter what a foreigner does to their 
tongue, the Russians are polite and charitable. 
They appreciate the novice's effort, if not his 



72 LENIN 

technic. So my speech was punctured with 
long periods of applause which gave me each 
time a breathing spell in which to assemble 
more words for another short advance. I 
wanted to tell them that if a great crisis came 
I should myself be glad to enlist in the ranks 
of the Red Army. I paused, fumbling for a 
word. Lenin looked up and asked, "What 
word do you want?" "Enlist," I answered. 
"Vstupit" he prompted. 

Thereafter, whenever I was stuck, he would 
fling the word up to me and I would catch it 
and hurl it out into the audience, modified, of 
course, by my American accent. This, and 
the fact that I stood there in the flesh, a tangi- 
ble symbol of the internationalism they had 
heard so much about, raised storms of laugh- 
ter and thundering applause. In this Lenin 
joined heartily. 

"Well, that's a beginning in Russian, at any 
rate," he said. "But you must keep at it 
hard. And you," he said, turning to Bessie 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 73 

Beatty, "you must learn Russian, too. Put an 
advertisement in the paper asking for ex- 
change lessons. Then just read, write and 
talk nothing but Russian. Don't talk with 
Americans — it won't do you any good, any- 
how," he added humorously. "Next time I 
see you I'll give you an examination." 

8. Lenin's Constant Exposure to Danger 

It very nearly came about that there was 
no next time. As the automobile with Lenin 
in it swung out of the Manege, there were 
three sharp reports and three bullets crashed 
through his car, one of them wounding Plat- 
ten, the Swiss delegate, who sat in the seat 
with Lenin. Some assassin up a side street 
had tried and failed. 

The Bolshevik leaders were, of course, in 
constant danger of their lives. The chief ob- 
ject of attention on the part of the bourgeois 
plotters was naturally Lenin. In his active 



74 LENIN 

brain, they said, were wrought the plans for 
their undoing. Oh, for a bullet to still that 
brain! That was the prayer that every day 
fervently went up from the altars of the 
counter-revolutionary homes. 

In such a home in Moscow we were always 
welcomed with a lavish hospitality. The 
great table with its steaming samovar was 
loaded with fruits and nuts, a bewildering ar- 
ray of zakuska, and what Arthur Ransome 
called "sweets," his particular failing. The 
war had done very handsomely by this house- 
hold. Speculation in all its branches, running 
goods by the underground route to Germany, 
and profiteering, grand and petty, had put 
this family upon the roof garden. Now sud- 
denly out of the darkness, knocking away the 
very foundations of the roof garden, came the 
Bolsheviks. They wanted to put a stop to 
the war. There was no reasoning with them. 
Wild, insane fellows ! They wanted to put a 
stop to everything, to speculation, to profiteer- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 75 

ing, to everything! The only thing to do was 
to put a stop to them. String them up! 
Shoot them down! Begin at the top with 
Lenin. 

"I have a million roubles this minute for 
the man who will kill Lenin," this rising 
young Moscow speculator informed me 
gravely, "and there are nineteen other men 
whom I can place my hands upon tomorrow, 
each with a million more for the cause." 

We asked our Bolshevik quintette whether 
Lenin was aware of the risk he was running. 
"Yes, he is quite aware of it," they said. "But 
he doesn't worry. You see, nothing really 
worries him." And apparently nothing did. 

Along a path beset with mines and pitfalls 
he walked with the composure of a country 
gentleman, while crises that shook men's 
nerves and blanched their faces found him 
cool and unruffled. Plan after plan of the 
counter-revolutionists and foreign imperial- 
ists to assassinate Lenin miscarried. But on 



76 LENIN 

the last of August, 191 8, the plotters almost 
succeeded. 

The Premier had finished his address to 
the 15,000 workmen at the Mikhelson Works. 
As he was returning to his car, a girl ran out 
holding a paper as if presenting a petition to 
the Premier. He reached out to take it and 
as he did so another girl, Dora Kaplan, fired 
three shots at him, two of them taking effect 
and stretching him out upon the pavement. 
He was lifted into his car and driven to the 
Kremlin. While bleeding profusely from his 
wounds he insisted upon walking up the steps. 
He was wounded more seriously than he 
thought. For weeks he was close to death. 
The strength left from fighting the fever in 
his veins he gave to fighting the fever of re- 
venge that ran through the country. 

For the masses, enraged that the dark 
forces of reaction had struck down the man 
who stood as the symbol of all their liberties 
and aspirations, struck back at the bourgeoisie 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 77 

and at the monarchists with the Red Terror. 
Many of the bourgeoisie had to pay with 
their lives for the assassinations of the com- 
missars and the attempt upon Lenin. So 
fierce was the wrath of the people that hun- 
dreds more would have perished had not 
Lenin pleaded with the people to restrain 
their fury. Through all the furor it is safe 
to say that he was the calmest man in Russia. 

Q. Lenin's Extraordinary Self-Composure 

On all occasions he maintained the most 
perfect self-control. Events that stirred 
others to a frenzy were an invitation to quiet 
and serenity in him. 

The one historic session of the Constituent 
Assembly was a turbulent scene as the two 
factions came to death-grips with each other. 
The delegates, shouting battle-cries and beat- 
ing on the desks, the orators, thundering out 
threats and challenges, and two thousand 



78 LENIN 

voices, passionately singing the International 
and the Revolutionary march, charged the 
atmosphere with electricity. As the night ad- 
vanced one felt the voltage of the place going 
up and up. In the galleries we gripped the 
rails, jaws set and nerves on edge. Lenin sat 
in a front tier box, looking bored. 

At last he rose, and walking to the back of 
the tribunal he stretched himself upon the red 
carpeted stairs. He glanced casually around 
the vast concourse. Then as if saying, "So 
many people wasting nervous force. Well, 
here's one who is going to store some up," he 
propped his head on his hand and went to 
sleep. The eloquence of the orators and the 
roar of the audience rolled above his head, 
but peacefully he slumbered on. Once or 
twice, opening his eyes, he blinked about him, 
and nodded off again. 

Finally, rising, he stretched himself and 
strolled leisurely down to his place in the 
front tier box. Seeing our opening, Reed and 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 79 

I slipped down to question him about the pro- 
ceedings of the Constituent Assembly. He 
replied indifferently. He asked about the ac- 
tivities of the Propaganda Bureau. His face 
brightened up as we told him how the ma- 
terial was being printed by tons, that it was 
really getting across the trenches into the Ger- 
man army. But we found it hard to work in 
the German language. 

"Ah!" he said with sudden animation, as he 
recalled my exploits on the armored car, "and 
how goes the Russian language? Can you 
understand all these speeches now?" 

"There are so many words in Russian," I 
replied evasively. "That's it," he retorted. 
"You must go at it systematically. You must 
break the backbone of the language at the out- 
set. I'll tell you my method of going at it." 

In essence, Lenin's system was this: First, 
learn all the nouns, learn all the verbs, learn 
all the adverbs and adjectives, learn all the 
rest of the words; learn all the grammar and 



80 LENIN 

rules of syntax, then keep practicing every- 
where and upon everybody. As may be seen, 
Lenin's system was more thorough-going than 
subtle. It was, in short, his system of the con- 
quest of the bourgeoisie applied to the con- 
quest of a language, a merciless applica- 
tion to the job. But he was quite exercised 
over it. 

He leaned over the box, with sparkling 
eyes, and drove his words home with gestures. 
Our fellow reporters looked on enviously. 
They thought that Lenin was violently ex- 
coriating the crimes of the opposition, or di- 
vulging the secret plans of the Soviet, or 
spurring us to greater zeal for the Revolution. 
In a crisis like this, surely only such themes 
could draw forth this burst of energy from 
the head of the Great Russian state. But 
they were wrong. The Premier of Russia 
was merely giving an exposition on how to 
learn a foreign language and w r as enjoying 
the diversion of a little friendly conversation. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 81 

In the tension of great debates, when his 
opponents were lashing him unmercifully, 
Lenin would sit in serene composure, even ex- 
tracting humor from the situation. After his 
address at the Fourth Congress, he took his 
seat upon the tribunal to listen to the assaults 
of his five opponents. Whenever he thought 
that the point scored against him was good, 
Lenin would smile broadly, joining in the ap- 
plause. Whenever he thought it was ridicu- 
lous, Lenin, smiling ironically, would give a 
mock applause, striking his thumb-nails to- 
gether. 

10. Lenin's Manner in Private Address 

Only once did I see evidence of weariness 
in him. After a midnight meeting of the 
Soviet, he stepped into the elevator of the 
National Hotel with his wife and sister. 
"Good evening," he said, rather wearily. 
"No," he added, "it's good morning. I've 



82 LENIN 

been talking all day and night, and I'm tired. 
I'm riding the elevator though it is but one 
flight up." 

Only once did I ever see him hurried or 
rushed. That was in February, when the 
Tauride palace was again the scene of a fe- 
vered conflict — the debate over war or peace 
with Germany. Suddenly he appeared, and 
with quick, vigorous stride was fairly hurtling 
himself down the long hall toward the plat- 
form entrance. Professor Charles Kuntz and 
I were lying in wait for him, and hailed him 
with "Just a minute, Tovarishch Lenin." 

He checked his headlong flight and came 
to attention in almost military fashion, bowed 
very gravely, and said, "Will you be so good 
as to let me go this time, comrades? I haven't 
even as much as a second. They are await- 
ing me inside the hall. I beg you to excuse 
me this time, please." With another bow 
and a handshake he was off in full stride 
again. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 83 

Wilcox, an anti-Bolshevik, commenting on 
the amenity of Lenin in intimate relation- 
ships, says that an English merchant, in order 
to rescue his family from a critical situation, 
went to seek Lenin's personal aid. He was 
astonished to find the "blood-thirsty tyrant" a 
mild-mannered man, courteous and sympa- 
thetic in bearing, and almost eager to afford 
all assistance in his power. 

In fact, at times he seemed over-courteous, 
exaggeratedly so. This may have been due 
to his use of English, lifting bodily from the 
books the elaborate forms of polite conversa- 
tion. More probably, it was part of his tech- 
nic in social intercourse, for Lenin was highly 
efficient here as elsewhere. He refused to 
squander his time upon non-essential persons; 
he was not easily accessible. In his ante-room 
is this notice: 

"Visitors are asked to take into considera- 
tion that they are to speak to a man whose 
business is enormous. He asks them to ex- 



84 LENIN 

plain clearly and briefly what they have come 
to say." 

It was hard to get at Lenin, but once you 
did you had all there was of him. All his 
faculties were focused upon you in a man- 
ner so acute as to be embarrassing. After a 
polite, almost an effusive, greeting, he drew 
up closer until his face would be no more than 
a foot away. As the conversation went on he 
often came still closer, gazing into your eyes 
as if he were searching out the inmost reces- 
ses of your brain and peering into your very 
soul. Only an extraordinarily brazen liar 
like Malinovsky could withstand the steady 
impact of that gaze. 

We often met a certain Socialist who in 
1905 had taken part in the Moscow uprising 
and had even fought well on the barricades. 
A career and the comforts of life had weaned 
him from his first ardent devotion. He wore 
now an air of prosperity, acting as correspond- 
ent for an English newspaper syndicate and 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 85 

Plekhanov's Yedinstvo. Bourgeois writers 
were regarded by Lenin as wasters of time; 
but by playing up his past revolutionary rec- 
ord this man had managed to secure an ap- 
pointment with Lenin. He was in high spir- 
its as he went away to meet it. Some hours 
later I saw him in a state of perturbation. He 
explained: 

"When I walked into the office I referred 
to my part in the 1905 revolution. Lenin 
came up to me and said, 'Yes, comrade, but 
what are you doing for this revolution?' His 
face was not more than six inches away and 
his eyes were looking straight into mine. I 
spoke of my old days on the Moscow barri- 
cades, and took a step backwards. But Lenin 
took a step forward, not letting go my eyes, 
and said again, 'Yes, comrade, but what are 
you doing for this revolution?' It was like an 
X-ray — as if he saw all my deeds of the last 
ten years. I couldn't stand it. I had to look 
down like a guilty child. I tried to talk, but 



86 LENIN 

it was no use. I had to come away." A few 
days later this man threw in his lot with this 
revolution and became a worker for the 
Soviet. 

//. Lenin's Sincerity and Hatred of 

Unreality 

One of the secrets of Lenin's power is his 
terrible sincerity. He was sincere with his 
friends. He was gratified, of course, with 
each accession to the ranks, but he would not 
enlist a single recruit by painting in roseate 
hues the conditions of service, or the future 
prospects. Rather he tended to paint things 
blacker than they were. The burden of many 
of Lenin's speeches was : "The goal the Bol- 
sheviks are striving for is far away — further 
away than most of you dream. We have 
led Russia along a rough road, but the course 
we follow will bring us more enemies, more 
hunger. Difficult as the past has been, the 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 87 

future promises harder things — harder than 
you imagine." Not an alluring promise. 
Not the usual call to arms ! Yet as the Italians 
rallied to Garibaldi, who came offering 
wounds, prison and death, the Russians rallied 
to Lenin. This was a little discomforting to 
one expecting the leader to glorify his cause 
and to urge the prospective convert into join- 
ing it. He left the urge to come from within. 

Lenin is sincere even with his avowed ene- 
mies. An Englishman, commenting on his 
extraordinary frankness, says his attitude was 
like this : "Personally, I have nothing against 
you. Politically, however, you are my enemy 
and I must use every weapon I can think of 
for your destruction. Your government does 
the same against me. Now let us see how far 
we can go along together." 

This stamp of sincerity is on all his public 
utterances. Lenin is lacking in the usual out- 
fit of the statesman-politician — bluff, glitter- 
ing verbiage and success-psychology. One 



88 LENIN 

felt that he could not fool others even if he 
desired to. And for the same reasons that he 
could not fool himself : His scientific attitude 
of mind, his passion for the facts. 

His lines of information ran out in every 
direction, bringing him multitudes of facts. 
These he weighed, sifted and assayed. Then 
he utilized them as a strategist, a master chem- 
ist working in social elements, a mathemati- 
cian. He would approach a subject in this 
way: 

"Now the facts that count for us are these : 

One, two, three, four " He would briefly 

enumerate them. "And the factors that are 
against us are these." 

In the same way he would count them up, 

"One, two, three, four Are there any 

others?" he would ask. We would rack our 
brains for another, but generally in vain. 
Elaborating the points on each side, pro and 
contra, he would proceed with his calculation 
as with a problem in mathematics. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 89 

In his glorification of the fact he is the very 
opposite of Wilson. Wilson as a word-artist 
gilds all subjects with glittering phrases, 
dazzling and mesmerizing the people and 
blinding them to the ugly realities and crass 
economic facts involved. Lenin comes as a 
surgeon with his scalpel. He uncovers the 
simple economic motives that lie behind the 
grand language of the imperialists. Their 
proclamations to the Russian people he strips 
bare and naked, revealing behind their fair 
promises the black and grasping hand of the 
exploiters. 

Relentless as he is toward the phraseolo- 
gists of the Right, he is equally as hard upon 
those phraseologists of the Left who seek 
refuge from reality in revolutionary slogans. 
He feels it his duty "to pour vinegar and bile 
into the sweetened waters of revolutionary- 
democratic eloquence," and he treats the sen- 
timentalist and shouter of shibboleths with 
caustic ridicule. 



9 o LENIN 

When the Germans were making their drive 
upon the Red Capital a flood of telegrams 
poured in on Smolny from all over Russia, 
expressing amazement, horror and indigna- 
tion. They ended with slogans like "Long 
live the invincible Russian proletariat !" 
"Death to the imperialistic robbers I" "With 
our last drop of blood we will defend the 
Capital of the Revolution!" 

Lenin read them and then dispatched a tele- 
gram to all the Soviets, asking them kindly 
not to send revolutionary phrases to Petro- 
grad, but to send troops; also to state precisely 
the number of volunteers enrolled, and- to for- 
ward an exact report upon the arms, ammu- 
nition and food conditions. 

12. Lenin at Work in a Crisis 

With the advance of the Germans came the 
flight of the foreigners. The Russians mani- 
fested a mild surprise that all those who had 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 91 

so wildly cried to them, "Kill the Huns!" now 
fled precipitately when the Hun came within 
killing range. It would have been good to 
join the hegira, but there was my pledge made 
upon the armored car. So I went out to join 
the Red Army. Bukharin, the Left-Bolshe- 
vik, insisted that I should see Lenin. 

"My congratulations! My felicitations !" 
said Lenin. "It looks very bad for us just 
now. The old army will not fight. The new 
one is largely upon paper. Pskov has just 
been surrendered without resistance. That is 
a crime. The President of the Soviet ought 
to be shot. Our workers have great self-sac- 
rifice and heroism. But no military training, 
no discipline." 

Thus in about twenty short sentences he 
summed up the situation, ending with, "All 
I can see is peace. Yet the Soviet may be for 
war. In any case, my congratulations for 
joining the Revolutionary Army. After your 
struggle with the Russian language you ought 



92 LENIN 

to be in good training to fight the Germans." 
He ruminated a moment and added : 

"One foreigner can't do much fighting. 
Maybe you can find others." I told him that 
I might try to form a detachment. 

Lenin was a direct actionist. A plan con- 
ceived, at once he proceeded to put it into 
execution. He turned to the telephone to ring 
up Krylenko, the Soviet commander. Fail- 
ing, he picked up a pen and scribbled him a 
note. 

By night we had formed the International 
Legion and issued our call summoning all men 
speaking foreign languages to enroll in the 
new company. But Lenin did not drop the 
matter there. He was not content merely with 
inaugurating something in the grand manner. 
He followed it up relentlessly and in detail. 
Twice he telephoned the Pravda office in- 
structing them to print the call in Russian and 
in English. Then he telegraphed it through 
the country. Thus, while opposing the war, 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 93 

and particularly those who were intoxicating 
themselves with revolutionary phrases about 
it, Lenin was mobilizing every force to pre- 
pare for it. 

He sent an automobile with Red Guards 
to the fortress of Peter and Paul to fetch part 
of the counter-revolutionary staff imprisoned 
there. 

"Gentlemen," said Lenin, as the generals 
filed into his office, "I have brought you here 
for expert advice. Petrograd is in danger. 
Will you be good enough to work out the 
military tactics for its defense?" They as- 
sented. 

"Here are our forces," resumed Lenin, in- 
dicating upon the map the location of the Red 
troops, munitions and reserves. "And here 
are our latest reports upon the number and 
disposition of the enemy troops. Anything 
else the generals desire they will call for." 

They set to work and toward evening 
handed him the result of their deliberations. 



94 LENIN 

"Now," said the generals ingratiatingly, "will 
the Premier be good enough to allow us more 
comfortable quarters?" 

"My exceeding regrets," replied Lenin. 
"Some other time, but not just now. Your 
quarters, gentlemen, may not be comfortable, 
but they have the merit of being very safe." 
The staff was returned to the fortress of Peter 
and Paul. 

13. Lenin as a Prophet and Statesman 

It is clear that Lenin's prowess as a states- 
man and seer arises not from any mystic in- 
tuition or power of divination, but from his 
ability to amass all the facts in the case and 
then to utilize them. He showed this ability 
in his work, "The Development of Capital- 
ism." There Lenin challenged the economic 
thought of his day by asserting that half the 
Russian peasants had been proletarianized, 
that, despite their possession of some land, 
these peasants were in effect "wage-earners 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 95 

with a piece of land." Bold and daring as the 
assertion was, it was corroborated by investi- 
gation in later years. Lenin had not merely 
guessed at it. It was his verdict after exten- 
sive marshalling of statistics in the Zemstvos 
and in other fields. 

One day, discussing with Peters the roots 
of Lenin's prestige, he said, "Often in the 
closed sessions of our party Lenin made cer- 
tain proposals based upon his analysis of the 
situation. We voted them down. Later on it 
turned out that Lenin was right and we were 
wrong." On the question of tactics there have 
been Homeric struggles between Lenin and 
other members of the party, in which later 
events have generally vindicated his judgment. 

Prominent Bolshevik leaders like Kame- 
nev and Zinoviev held that in the proposed 
November revolution it was impossible to suc- 
ceed. Lenin said, "It is impossible to fail." 
Lenin was right. The Bolsheviks made a ges- 
ture, and the governmental power fell into 



96 LENIN 

their hands. None were more surprised than 
the Bolsheviks at the ease with which it was 
accomplished. 

The other Bolshevik leaders said that 
though they might take the power they could 
not hold it. Lenin said, "Every day will bring 
us fresh strength." Lenin was right. After 
two years of fighting against enemies hem- 
ming them in from all sides, the Soviet ad- 
vances on every front. 

Trotzky pursued his juggling tactics with 
the Germans, decoying them along but refus- 
ing to sign the treaty. Lenin said, "Don't play 
with them. Sign the first treaty offered, how- 
ever bad, or we shall have to sign a worse 
one." Again Lenin was right. The Russians 
were forced to sign "the brigand's" "the ban- 
dit's" peace of Brest-Litovsk. 

In the Spring of 1918, while the whole 
world was ridiculing the idea of a German 
revolution, and the Kaiser's army was smash- 
ing the Allied line in France, Lenin in a con- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 97 

versation with me said, "The Kaiser's down- 
fall will come within the year. It is abso- 
lutely certain." Nine months later the Kaiser 
was a fugitive from his own people. 

"If you are going back to America," said 
Lenin to me in April, 1918, "you should start 
very soon, or the American army will meet 
you in Siberia." That was an amazing state- 
ment, as at that time, in Moscow, we had come 
to believe that America was cherishing only 
the largest good-will toward the new Russia. 
"That is impossible," I protested. "Why, 
Raymond Robins thinks there is even a pos- 
sibility of recognition of the Soviets." 

"Yes," said Lenin, "but Robins represents 
the liberal bourgeoisie of America. They do 
not decide the policy of America. Finance- 
capital does. And finance-capital wants con- 
trol of Siberia. And it will send American 
soldiers to get it." This point of view was 
preposterous to me. Yet later, June 29, 1918, 
I saw with my own eyes the landing of Amer- 



98 LENIN 

ican sailors in Vladivostok, while Czarists, 
Czechs, British, Japanese and other Allies 
hauled down the flag of the Soviet Republic 
and ran up the flag of the old autocracy. 

Lenin's predictions have so often been veri- 
fied by the events that his view of the future 
is, to say the least, interesting. Here is the 
gist of Naudeau's famous interview as it ap- 
peared in the Paris Temps in April, 1919. 

"The future of the world?" said Lenin. "I 
am not a prophet. But this much is certain. 
The capitalist state, of which England is an 
example, is dying out. The old order is 
doomed. The economic conditions arising out 
of the war are driving towards the new order. 
The evolution of mankind inevitably leads to 
Socialism. 

"Who would have believed some years ago 
that the nationalization of railroads in Amer- 
ica was possible? And we have seen that 
Republic buy all the grain in order to use it 
to the fullest advantage of the state. All that 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 99 

is said against the state has not retarded this 
evolution. True it is necessary to create and 
contrive new means of control in order to 
remedy the imperfections. But any attempts 
to prevent the state from becoming sovereign 
are futile. For the inevitable comes and 
comes of its own momentum. The English 
say, 'The proof of the pudding is in the eat- 
ing.' Say what you will of the Socialistic 
pudding, all the nations eat and will eat more 
and more of it. 

"To sum up. Experience seems to prove 
that each human group goes on towards So- 
cialism by its own particular way. Even the 
Letts go at it differently from the Russians. 
There will be many passing forms and varia- 
tions, but they are all different phases of a 
revolution which tends toward the same end. 
If a Socialistic regime is established in France 
or Germany, it will be much easier to per- 
petuate it than here in Russia. For in the 
West Socialism will find frameworks, organi- 



ioo LENIN 

zations, all kinds of intellectual auxiliaries 
and materials, which are not to be found in 
Russia." 

14. Lenin's Attitude Toward Men of 
Brains 

"For every honest Bolshevik there are 
thirty-nine scoundrels and sixty fools." This 
widely quoted sentence has been put into the 
mouth of Lenin in an attempt to picture him 
as the grand patrician with cynical mistrust of 
the masses. To support this curious charge a 
statement of fifteen years ago is dug up. It 
says that the working-classes of themselves de- 
veloped only a trade-unionist consciousness, 
that is, the sense of organization, striking 
against employer, the eight-hour day, etc. 
But the ideas of Socialism have come to the 
workers largely from outside, from the intel- 
lectuals. 

It is true that in all their actions and de- 
crees Lenin and the Soviet government show 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 101 

the high value they set upon brains. In every 
realm Lenin defers to the expert. He looks 
to the generals even of the Czar's regime as 
the authorities in military affairs. If Marx, 
the German, is Lenin's authority in revolu- 
tionary tactics, Taylor, the American, is his 
authority in efficiency production. And he 
always was stressing the value of the expert 
accountant, the big engineer, the specialist in 
every field of activity. He believed that the 
Soviet would be a magnet drawing them from 
around the world. He believed they would 
see in the Soviet system a wider range for the 
play of their creative abilities than in any 
other system. 

It is said that Harriman was worn out not 
so much by the task of operating his great 
railroad as by the problem of financing it. 
Under the Soviet system he would not have to 
divert his energy from the work of adminis- 
tering to financing. For, under the Soviet, 
economic power is delegated to the head ad- 



io2 LENIN 

ministrator quite as we delegate political 
power to our representative in Congress. He 
is given the vast resources of Russia to work 
upon. Besides, Russia under the Soviet offers 
to the engineer or administrator not only its 
vast wealth to work upon but also a labor force, 
enthusiastic and alive, with which to work it. 

This latter condition does not obtain under 
the capitalist system where the workman's 
greatest interest lies in his wages rather than 
in his work, and where the management and 
the labor force come into constant conflict. 
Under the Soviet the energies of the men, in- 
stead of being spent in quarreling over the 
division of the product, are liberated for the 
task of larger production. Lenin believed in 
the great results arising from the Soviet sys- 
tem calling out the enthusiastic creative en- 
ergies of the masses and at the same time giv- 
ing a free hand to the men of brains and 
genius. 

In his survey of social forces Lenin made 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 103 

his estimate of the value of all the different 
elements. The intellectuals had their place 
before and after the Revolution. As agitators 
they could help make the Revolution pos- 
sible. As experts with skill and technic they 
could help make the Revolution permanent 
and stable. 

75« Lenin's Attitude Toward Americans, 
Capitalists and Concessions 

American technicians, engineers and admin- 
istrators Lenin particularly held in high 
esteem. He wanted five thousand of them, he 
wanted them at once, and was ready to pay 
them the highest salaries. He was constantly 
assailed for having a peculiar leaning toward 
America. Indeed, his enemies cynically re- 
ferred to him as "the agent of the Wall Street 
bankers," and in the heat of debate the extreme 
Left hurled this charge in his face. 

As a matter of fact, American capitalism 



I04 LENIN 

was to him not less evil than the capitalism of 
any other nation. But America was so far 
away. It did not offer a direct threat to the 
life of Soviet Russia. And it did offer the 
goods and experts that Soviet Russia needed. 
"Why is it not then to the mutual interest of 
the two countries to make a special agree- 
ment?" asked Lenin. 

But is it possible for a communistic state to 
deal with a capitalistic state? Can the two 
forms live side by side? These questions were 
put to Lenin by Naudeau. 

"Why not?" said Lenin. "We want techni- 
cians, scientists and the various products of 
industry, and it is clear that we by ourselves 
are incapable of developing the immense re- 
sources of this country. Under the circum- 
stances, though it may be unpleasant for us, 
we must admit that our principles, which 
hold in Russia, must, beyond our frontiers, 
give place to political agreements. We very 
sincerely propose to pay interest on our for- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 105 

eign loans, and in default of cash we will pay 
them in grain, oil and all sorts of raw mate- 
rials in which we are rich. 

"We have decided to grant concessions of 
forests and mines to citizens of the Entente 
powers, always on the condition that the es- 
sential principles of the Russian Soviets are 
to be respected. Furthermore, we will even 
consent — not cheerfully, it is true, but with 
resignation — to the cession of some territory 
of the old Empire of Russia to certain En- 
tente powers. We know that the English, 
Japanese and American capitalists very much 
desire such concessions. 

"We have granted to an international asso- 
ciation the construction of the Veliky Severny 
Put, The Great Northern Line. Have you 
heard of it? It is about 3,000 versts of rail- 
road, starting at Soroka, near the Gulf of 
Onega, and running by way of Kotlas across 
the Ural mountains to the Obi River. Im- 
mense virgin forests with 8,000,000 hectares 



106 LENIN 

of land and all kinds of unexploited mines will 
fall within the domain of the constructing 
company. 

"This state property is ceded for a certain 
time, probably eighty years, and with the 
right of redemption. We exact nothing dras- 
tic of the association. We ask only the ob- 
servance of the laws passed by the Soviet, 
like the eight-hour day and the control of the 
workers' organizations. It is true that this is 
far from Communism. It does not at all cor- 
respond to our ideal, and we must say that this 
question has raised some very lively contro- 
versies in Soviet journals. But we have de- 
cided to accept that which the epoch of tran- 
sition renders necessary." 

"So you believe, then," said Naudeau, "that, 
considering the dangers run here by foreign 
capitalists — dangers which do not seem to 
have been removed, and which one fears may 
be aggravated at any time — you believe that 
financiers will have courage enough to come 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 107 

to Russia and let it swallow up new treasures? 
They will not begin such a task without the 
protection of an armed force from their own 
country. Will you consent to such an occu- 
pation ?" 

"It will be quite superfluous," said Lenin, 
"because the Soviet Government will observe 
faithfully what they have bound themselves to 
observe. But all points of view may be con- 
sidered." 

The reports from the Great Moscow Eco- 
nomic Council in June, 19 19, show Lenin 
with Chicherin battling for the policy of eco- 
nomic alliance with America against the en- 
gineer Krassin leading the fight for economic 
alliance with Germany. 

16. Lenin's Tremendous Faith in the 
Proletarians 

To Lenin, of course, the driving force of 
the Revolution, its soul and its sinew, was the 



108 LENIN 

proletariat. The only hope of a new so- 
ciety lay in the masses. This was not the 
popular view. The conception of the Russian 
masses generally current makes them but 
shambling creatures of the soil, shiftless, lazy, 
illiterate, with dark minds set only upon 
vodka, devoid of idealism, incapable of sus- 
tained effort. 

Over against this stands Lenin's estimate of 
the "ignorant" masses. Through the long 
years, in season and out of season, he insisted 
upon their resoluteness, their tenacity, their 
capacity for sacrificing and suffering, their 
ability to grasp large political ideas, and the 
great creative and constructive forces latent 
within them. This seems like an almost reck- 
less trust in the character of the masses. How 
far have results justified Lenin's venture of 
faith in the Russian workinmen? 

Their ability to grasp large political ideas 
has astounded all observers who have gone 
below the surface in Russia. It made a mem- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 109 

ber of the Root Mission ask in wonder, "How 
came so much of the mass of the Russian peo- 
ple, viewed by all the truly learned as igno- 
rant and stupid, to seize upon a social philoso- 
phy so new to the rest of the world and so far 
in advance of it?" The hundreds of young 
men sent over by the Y. M. C. A. and other 
agencies were a puzzle to the Russian work- 
ingman. These "educators" were the grad- 
uates of American universities and yet they 
did not know the difference between Social- 
ism, Syndicalism and Anarchism, which was 
the A B C in the education of millions of 
Russian workingmen. 

The American propaganda agents spread 
President Wilson's Fourteen-Points Speech in 
Russia by hundreds of thousand of copies. 

Passing these out to workers or peasants, 
they would ask, "What do you think of it?" 

"It sounds very good," they would gener- 
ally reply, "but there is nothing back of it. 
President Wilson may have these ideals in his 



no LENIN 

head, but there will be none of these ideals in 
the Treaty of Peace unless the workers have 
control of the government." 

An eminent American professor who heard 
the Russians say this laughed at their scep- 
ticism. To-day he laughs at his own credulity 
and wonders how these "dark people" in the 
little Soviets in the remote parts of backward 
Russia had a better grasp on international 
politics than himself. 

The British worked on the plan that it was 
only necessary to appeal to the immediate self- 
interest of the masses. They arrived in Arch- 
angel bringing jam, whiskey and white flour 
with which to seduce the people. The fam- 
ished folk rejoiced to receive the gifts, but 
when they saw that these were bribes to blind 
them and that the price of these goods was 
the integrity and freedom of Russia, they 
turned upon the invaders and drove them 
from the country. 

Time has also justified Lenin's faith in the 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN in 

tenacity and resoluteness of the Russian mas- 
ses. Compare the dire prophecies of 1917 
with the facts of to-day. "Three days and 
their power is gone," croaked the enemies of 
the Soviets then. The three days passed into 
as many more, and the cry became, "Three 
weeks is the utmost that the Soviet can last." 
Again they had to change the cry. This time 
it became "Three months." Now, after eight 
times three months, the best the enemies of the 
Soviets can offer their backers is "Three 
years." 

I J, The Achievements of the Workers and 
Peasants greater than his Expectations 

The strength and persistence of the Soviet 
Government does not lie, as some infer, in the 
violation of all law, the strange whimsy of an 
inscrutable Providence. It rests just where 
Lenin said it would — on the solid achieve- 
ments of the workers and peasants. 

In the economic field they have started new 



ii2 LENIN 

processes for the manufacture of linen, 
matches and the utilization of the great peat- 
beds of Russia. They have completed vast 
engineering enterprises ranging from the set- 
ting-up of power-plants and electric stations 
to the dredging of the great canal between the 
Baltic Sea and the Volga River and the build- 
ing of hundreds of versts of railways. 

In the military realm the workers and peas- 
ants submitted themselves to a stern military 
discipline which transformed the Red Army 
into one of the most formidable fighting- 
machines in the world. These proletarians 
have a distinct morale and spirit. Hitherto 
they have always fought in the interests of 
some superior caste. Now for the first time 
they are fighting — consciously — battles in 
their own interest and in the interests of the 
toiling and exploited peoples of the world. 

But it is in the cultural realm that the tri- 
umphs of the "dark people" have been most 
significant Make man free and he creates. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 113 

Under the quickening touch of the new spirit 
there have grown up ten new universities, 
scores of theatres, thousands of libraries, 
and common schools by the tens of thou- 
sands. 

It was these realities that converted Maxim 
Gorky from a bitter enemy into a partizan of 
the Soviets. "The cultural creative work of 
the Russian Government," he writes, "is about 
to have a scope and form hitherto unknown in 
the history of mankind. The historian of the 
future will be unable to avoid admiring the 
magnificence of this last year of the Russian 
workers in the realm of culture." 

More stupendous and significant are these 
achievements when one considers the handi- 
caps under which the masses labored. When 
they took over the government they had as 
their heritage a people brow-beaten, impov- 
erished and oppressed for centuries. The 
Great War had killed two million of their 
able-bodied men, wounded and crippled an- 



ii 4 LENIN 

other 3,000,000 and left them with hundreds 
of thousands of orphans and hundreds of 
thousands of the blind, the deaf and the dumb. 
The railways were broken down, the mines 
flooded, the reserves of food and fuel nearly 
gone. The economic machinery, dislocated 
by the war and further shattered by the Revo- 
lution, had suddenly thrown upon it the task 
of demobilizing 12,000,000 soldiers. They 
raised a bumper grain crop, but the Czechs, 
supported by the Japanese, French, British 
and Americans, cut them off from the grain 
fields of Siberia, and the other counter-revolu- 
tionaries from the grain fields of the Ukraine. 
"Now," they said, "the bony hand of hunger 
will clutch the people by the throat and bring 
them to their senses." Because they separated 
the church from state they were excommuni- 
cated. They were sabotaged by the old offi- 
cials, deserted by the intelligentzia and 
blockaded by the Allies. The Allies tried by 
all manner of threats, bribery and assassina- 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 115 

tion to overthrow their government, British 
agents blowing up the railway bridges to pre- 
vent supplies reaching the big cities, and 
French agents, under safe-conduct from their 
consulates, putting emery in the bearings of 
the locomotives. 

Facing these facts, Lenin said: 

"Yes, we have mighty enemies, but against 
them we have the iron battalion of the pro- 
letarians. The vast majority are not as yet 
truly conscious and they are not active. And 
the reason is clear. They are war weary, 
hungry and exhausted. The Revolution now 
is only skin deep, but with rest there will 
come a big psychological change. If it 
only comes in time the Soviet Republic is 
saved." 

To Lenin's mind the episode of November, 
1917 — the masses spectacularly crashing into 
power — was not the Revolution. But these 
masses becoming conscious of their mis- 
sion, passing into discipline and orderly work, 



n6 LENIN 

and bringing into the field their great creative 
and constructive forces — that would be the 
Revolution. 

In those early days Lenin was never cer- 
tain that the Soviet Republic was saved. "Ten 
days more!" he exclaimed, "and we shall 
have lasted as long as the Paris Commune." 
In opening his address to the Third All-Rus- 
sian Congress in Petrograd, he said, "Com- 
rades, consider that the Commune of Paris 
held out for seventy days. We have already 
lasted for two days more than that." 

More than ten times seventy days the great 
Russian Commune has held out against a 
world of enemies. Great was the faith of 
Lenin in the tenacity, the perseverance, the 
resoluteness, the heroism, and the economic, 
military and cultural potentialities of the 
proletarians. Their achievements are not 
merely the vindication of his zealous faith. 
They are a source of amazement to him- 
self. 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 117 

18. The Russian Revolution a Success 
apart from Lenin 

As Lenin arises in Russia to become the 
central figure on the world's stage, a storm of 
controversy rages around him. 

To the terrified bourgeoisie he is a bolt 
from the blue, an awful portent of nature, a 
world-devastating scourge. 

To the mystically minded he is the great 
"Mongolian Slav," mentioned in that 
strangely fulfilled pre-war prophecy attribut- 
ed to Tolstoy. After predicting the outbreak 
of the Great War, its causes and its place, it 
goes on to say: "I see all Europe in flames and 
bleeding. I hear the lamentations of huge 
battlefields. But about the year 1915 a strange 
figure from the North — a new Napoleon — 
enters the stage of the bloody drama. He is 
a man of little military training, a writer or 
a journalist, but in his grip most of Europe 
will remain till 1925." 



n8 LENIN 

To the reactionary Church Lenin is the 
Anti-Christ. The priests try to rally the peas- 
ants around the sacred banners and ikons and 
lead them against the Red Army. But the 
peasants say, "He may be Anti-Christ, but 
he brings us land and freedom. Why then 
should we fight him?" 

To the man in the street Lenin has almost 
a superhuman significance. He is the Maker 
of the Russian Revolution, the Founder of 
the Soviet, the cause of all that Russia is to- 
day. "Kill Lenin and Trotzsky and you kill 
the Revolution and the Soviet." 

This is to view history as the product of 
Great Men, as if great events and epochs were 
determined by their great leaders. It is true 
that a whole epoch may express itself in a 
single personality, and that a great mass- 
movement may focus itself in an individual. 
But that is the utmost that can be conceded to 
the Carlylean view. 

Certainly any interpretation of history that 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 119 

makes the Russian Revolution hinge upon a 
single person or group of persons is mislead- 
ing. Lenin would be the first to scoff at the 
idea that the fortunes of the Russian Revo- 
lution lie in his hands or in the hands of his 
confreres. 

The fate of the Russian Revolution lies in 
the source whence it has sprung — in the hearts 
and hands of the masses. It lies back in those 
economic forces, the pressure of which has set 
those masses into motion. For centuries these 
masses had been quiescent, patient, long-suf- 
fering. All across the vast reaches of Rus- 
sia, over the Muscovite plains, the Ukranian 
steppes, and along the great rivers of Siberia, 
they toiled under the lash of poverty, 
chained by superstition, their lot little better 
than that of the beast. But there is an end to 
all things — even the patience of the poor. 

In March, 1917, with a crash heard round 
the world, the city masses broke their fetters. 
Army after army of soldiers followed their 



120 LENIN 

example and revolted. Then the Revolution 
permeated the villages, going deeper and 
deeper, firing the most backward sections with 
the revolutionary spirit, until a nation of 180,- 
000,000 has been stirred to its depths — seven 
times as many as in the French Revolu- 
tion. 

Caught by a great vision, a whole race 
strikes camp, and moves out to build a new 
order. It is the most tremendous movement 
of the human spirit in centuries. Based on 
the bed-rock of the economic interest of the 
masses, it is the most resolute strike for jus- 
tice in history. A great nation turns crusader 
and, loyal to the vision of a new world, 
marches on in the face of hunger, war, block- 
ade and death. It drives ahead, sweeping 
aside the leaders who fail them, following 
those who answer their needs and their aspira- 
tions. 

In the masses themselves lies the fate of the 
Russian Revolution — in their discipline and 



TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 121 

devotion. Fortune, indeed, has been very kind 
to them. It gave them for guide and inter- 
preter a man with a giant mind and an iron 
will, a man of vast learning and fearless ac- 
tion, a man of the loftiest idealism and the 
most stern, practical sagacity. 



RAYMOND ROBINS' IMPRESSIONS 



RAYMOND ROBINS' IMPRESSIONS 

As Told to 
WILLIAM HARD 

/. Lenin in the Kremlin, Citadel of the 

Czars 

Walking through the Most Holy Gate, 
Colonel Robins, the head of the American Red 
Cross mission in Russia, arrived in the inside 
of the Kremlin. He entered the famous build- 
ing that had been the High Court of the Czar, 
and went up three flights of stairs to a little 
room, the walls of which were draped with 
velvet hangings. Here, at a great desk of 
beautiful wood, beautifully carved, the Czar 
had been accustomed to sit and sign certain 
papers of state. 

125 



126 LENIN 

There now sits Lenin, short-built and 
staunch-built, gray-eyed and bald-headed and 
tranquil. He wears a woolen shirt and a suit 
of clothes bought, one would think, many 
years ago, and last pressed shortly afterwards. 
The room is quite still. As he deprecates "the 
intoxication of the Revolutionary phrase," 
so he seems to reject the intoxication of 
Revolutionary excitement. He busies himself 
with reports of accounts and departments, and 
receives visitors for stated lengths of time — 
ten minutes, five minutes, one minute. He is 
likely to receive them standing, and he speaks 
to them in the low tones of a man who does not 
need to raise his voice. 

In his manner of easy authority one may, 
perhaps, see his father^ hereditary nobleman 
and State Councillor of the government of 
Simbirsk. In his ways of thought one is cer- 
tainly reminded of his brother, executed as a 
political offender by the Czar's police when 
Lenin was but seventeen years old. 



RAYMOND ROBINS 127 

Colonel Robins never visited Lenin in this 
High Court Building of the Czar without 
thinking of that execution and of the sanction 
given to it — and to all such executions — by the 
State Church of Russia. Behind the gallows, 
generation after generation, in every part of 
Russia, stand the priests, with their vessels of 
gold, their vestments of lovely weavings, and 
their ikons, preaching obedience to autocracy, 
speaking the word of God in support of the 
word of the Czar, and blessing the hangman. 

Out of that background came Lenin's utter- 
ances. He talked with no other assumption 
than that religion had departed out of the pub- 
lic life and out of the public policy of Russia, 
along with the Czar. He talked only of secu- 
lar effort, of material organization. 

2. Lenin's Growing Prestige as a Prophet 

On a momentous occasion, the occasion of 
the Brest-Litovsk treaty, Trotzky, in his pro- 
paganda, appealed to the German soldiers to 



128 LENIN 

rise up and break their masters who made 
them march. 

Would the German soldiers march? That 
was the immediate question. 

"No," said Trotzky. Like all artists, he be- 
lieved in the irresistible appealingness of his 
work. He had shown the German working- 
men the folly and wickedness of marching, 
and they would not march. 

"But they will," said Lenin. 

There was a certain private meeting of cer- 
tain members of the All-Russian and Petro- 
grad Soviets. It was a time of supreme ten- 
sion, of the stretching and snapping of many 
judgments and many reputations. The Ger- 
man Government had made its open and full 
announcement of its imperialistic and annexa- 
tionistic policies toward Russia. In the So- 
viet there was consternation, indignation, fury. 
But would the Russian Army, in the field, 
fight? 

"It will," said loud voices. 



RAYMOND ROBINS 129 

"But it will not," said Lenin. "It did not 
fight at Tarnopol. Kerensky was in power. 
He used all his influence and all his eloquence 
to make it fight. With the Allies he ordered 
the great advance. But the Russian army did 
not advance and did not fight. It ran, and it 
had to run. It is now no longer an army. It 
is only peasants wanting bread and land. It 
is going home. The Russian army will never 
fight again until it is reorganized into a new 
revolutionary army. The present army will 
not fight." 

Lenin spoke very calmly. He had written 
out his ideas into "twenty-one theses," as 
though he had prepared a course of lectures 
for a college. Those "twenty-one theses" were 
his reasons for believing that Russia would 
have to sign the peace. They were crushing. 
But Lenin did not try to crush with them at 
that meeting. 

He spoke for only about twenty minutes, 
and he spoke entirely without emphasis. He 



i 3 o LENIN 

merely stated his position. The Germans 
would advance ; the Russian army would not 
fight; and the Russian Socialist Republic, in 
order not to be trampled militarily out of ex- 
istence, would have to sign the peace. 

Then Trotzky swayed the meeting. The 
Revolution was afoot in Germany. Trotzky 
saw it striding on. Comrade Lenin was mis- 
taken. The German comrades were not so 
base as to fight for the terms of Brest-Litovsk. 
Besides, there was Poland, and there was 
Lithuania, and there was Letvia. They must 
not be surrendered to the Germans. The 
Polish comrades and the Lithuanian comrades 
and the Lettish comrades must not be desert- 
ed. We must hold them for the Revolution, 
said Trotzky. 

"We must not be intoxicated by the Revolu- 
tionary phrase," said Lenin. 

But Trotzky swayed the meeting, and Lenin 
let him. When Robins afterwards asked 
Lenin why he had permitted it, he said : 



RAYMOND ROBINS 131 

"I am willing to let Trotzky see if he can 
put off the peace. I am willing to let him see 
if he can save us from it. I would rejoice if 
he could. But I wanted the comrades to know 
what I am thinking. I wanted them to know 
it, so that they can remember it a few days 
from now. I have to keep their confidence." 

During those few days and until they ended, 
Lenin was very unpopular. Most of the lead- 
ers of the Soviet were on Trotzky's side. To 
many of them Lenin's position seemed to be 
monstrous. But everything turned out as 
Lenin said it would. Yet each new thing he 
said was spoken amid a storm of protest. 

"We will call the Fourth All-Russian Con- 
gress of Soviets," he said. "What?" was the 
answer. "Call the Congress now? It can't 
be done. Russia can't send delegates now. It 
can't bring its mind to think of sending them. 
And the delegates can't come, they won't 
travel, at this time. Impossible!" 

"We will call it at Moscow," said Lenin. 



132 LENIN 

"What?" was the answer, "Moscow? The 
stronghold of the reaction? Go to Moscow 
and the Hall of the Nobles and the haunts of 
the old regime? Leave Petrograd, the revo- 
lutionary city? Never!" 

But it happened. The Fourth All-Russian 
Congress of Soviets was called, as Lenin had 
said. The Germans had advanced, as Lenin 
had said. The Congress met at Moscow in the 
Hall of the Nobles, as Lenin had said. It 
ratified the peace, as Lenin had said. 

The shadow of Lenin grew upon Trotzky. 
It grew upon Radek. It grew upon Karolin. 
It grew upon everybody. More than ever 
they were eclipsed. More than ever Lenin 
was master. He had out-analyzed and out- 
seen everybody. His books and his documents 
and his reports and his theses and all his scho- 
lastic methods and manners had not hindered 
him — perhaps they had helped him — in be- 
coming his party's absolute realist and almost 
absolute ruler. 



RAYMOND ROBINS 133 

J. Lenin, Accused as a Traitor, Faces the 
Armed Mob 



One day, back in Petrograd, when the Ger- 
mans were advancing, Robins went out from 
his hotel to walk along the Nevsky Prospekt. 
He made toward the Neva. A crowd of peo- 
ple was gathering at a corner. Robins saw 
that they were reading a placard, spread on a 
dead wall, and that they were greatly excited 
by it. He joined them. The placard, in pur- 
port, said: 

"Lenin has absconded to Finland with 30,- 
000,000 roubles in gold from the State Bank. 
The Russian Revolution has been betrayed by 
false leaders. But there is hope now for Holy 
Russia. The Little Father is coming back. 
The Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich is ad- 
vancing from the Crimea with 200,000 brave, 
true Russian soldiers who will save Russia 
from the Bolshevik traitors." 

Robins turned and hurried back to his hotel 



i 3 4 LENIN 

to get his sleigh. He drove to Smolny, and 
waved his card at the doorkeepers, and ran 
upstairs. In the corridors were crowds of 
commissioners and clerks and guards, running, 
shouting, and running again, getting ready for 
something very imminent. Machine-guns 
were being unhooded. Their cartridges were 
being filled into them. The crowds, with the 
guns, surged over to one side of the building. 
Robins looked out from that side across the 
yard of Smolny, toward the Viborg — the Vi- 
borg workmen's quarter. 

Two streets stretched from there toward 
Smolny. They were black with two streams 
of armed workmen flowing toward Smolny. 
They would overwhelm Smolny and clean it 
out and then flow to the Front against the Ger- 
mans. Such was the cry. 

Robins drew back from his window and 
worked his way through a corridor of dense, 
panic-stricken people toward Lenin's private 
office. 



RAYMOND ROBINS 135 

Lenin was there, receiving telephone mes- 
sages from the Front. He was receiving per- 
sonal reports from couriers. He was writing 
orders and sending them out. He was work- 
ing without pause, as usual, and, as usual, with- 
out haste. He seemed quite unaware of any 
crisis. 

Robins was thrust into the room by shouting 
men behind him who cried to Lenin, "The 
order to fire!" 

Lenin jumped to his feet For just one mo- 
ment he, too, was excited. "No! No!" he said. 
Then again he said, "No! No!" this time an- 
grily. "Shoot them? We will talk to them. 
Tell their leaders to come in." 

Somebody went to call them, and Lenin sat 
down to his messages and his orders. The 
leaders of the mob began to come in and began 
to fill Lenin's office — workmen — in workmen's 
clothes — each with a bayoneted rifle in his 
hands and with a magazine pistol at his waist 
— workmen— soldiers — the men Lenin had to 



136 LENIN 

rely on — the armed Revolutionary proletariat 
— the nucleus of the future Red Army of 
Lenin's Russia. They grounded their rifles. 
Somebody said to Lenin, "They are here." 
The outer door was closed. 

Lenin rose and walked over toward his 
visitors. 

"Comrades," he said, "you see I have not run 
away. Comrades, I was fighting for the Revo- 
lution before some of you were born. I shall 
be fighting for the Revolution when some of 
you are dead. I stand always in danger. You 
stand in more danger. Let us talk frankly." 

He put his hands in his pockets and walked 
up and down, meditated, and spoke: 

"Comrades, I do not blame you for not al- 
ways trusting your leaders. There are so 
many voices in Russia today! I wonder that 
you have trusted us as much as you have. 

"Among honest Revolutionists to-day there 
are two voices. One of them is right. One is 
wrong. 



RAYMOND ROBINS 137 

"Many comrades say: 
\ " 'You must go to the Front and fight the 
Germans and die fighting — die fighting for 
the Revolution.' 

"They do not pretend, these comrades, that 
you are willing to fight for anything except 
the Revolution. But they say, and they say 
truly, that the Germans are against the Revo- 
lution. And so they say, 'Go and fight the 
Germans.' 

"I do not say so. I say: 

" 'You are the new army. You are the only 
army of the Revolution. You are the begin- 
ning of it. What will happen if you fight the 
Germans? The old army is not fighting. It 
cannot fight. It is exhausted. Only you, with 
the Revolution in you, want to fight. You 
know what will happen. You will fight. You 
will die. And the soldiers of the Revolution 
will be dead, and the Czar will come back.' 

"Would that be dying for the Revolution? 
Comrades, when we die, let us die really for 



138 LENIN 

the Revolution. Let us die when by dying we 
can win victory for the Revolution. 

"Comrades, my voice is right. They tell 
you I will make a shameful peace. Yes. I 
will make a shameful peace. They tell you I 
will surrender Petrograd, the Imperial City. 
Yes. I will surrender Petrograd, the Imperial 
City. They tell you I will surrender Moscow, 
the Holy City. I will. I will go back to the 
Volga, and I will go back behind the Volga to 
Yekaterinburg; but I will save the soldiers of 
the Revolution and I will save the Revolution. 

"Comrades, what is your will? 

"I will give you now a special train to the 
Front I will not stop you. You may go. But 
you will take my resignation with you. I have 
led the Revolution. I will not share in the 
murder of my own child. 

"Comrades, what is your will?" 

"Lenin ! Lenin ! Lenin !" The room held no 
other sound. "Comrade Lenin! Comrade 
Lenin!" It was a judgment delivered. Hav- 



RAYMOND ROBINS 139 

ing delivered it, the judges picked up their 
rifles and marched out of the room and down 
the corridor, still delivering their judgment: 
"Comrade Lenin." 

Such was Lenin face to face with his follow- 
ers. Such was Lenin the personal leader. 

4* Lenin Explains the Advantages of the 
Soviet System over the American 

On a certain day when Colonel Robins 
called on Lenin in that famous room with the 
velvet hangings, Lenin said to him: 

"We may be overthrown in Russia by the 
backwardness of the Russian people, or by a 
foreign power, but the idea in the Russian 
Revolution will break and wreck every politi- 
cal social control in the world. Our method 
of social control must dominate the future. 
Political social control will die. The Russian 
Revolution will kill it — everywhere." 

"But," said Robins, "my government is a 



i 4 o LENIN 

democratic government. Do you really mean 
that the idea in the Russian Revolution will 
destroy the democratic idea in the government 
of the United States?" 

"The American government," answered 
Lenin, "is corrupt." 

"That is not so," answered Robins. "Our 
national government and local governments 
are elected by the people. Most of the elec- 
tions are honest and fair, and the men elected 
are the true choice of the voters. You cannot 
call the American government a bought gov- 
ernment." 

"Ah, Colonel Robins," replied Lenin, "you 
do not understand. It is my fault. I should 
not have used the word corrupt. I do not 
mean that your government is corrupt through 
money. I mean that it is corrupt in that it is 
decayed in thought. It is living in the politi- 
cal thought of a by-gone political age. It is 
living in the age of Thomas Jefferson. It 
is not living in the present economic age. 



RAYMOND ROBINS 141 

It is, therefore, lacking in intellectual integ- 
rity. How shall I make it clear to you? 

"Take your states of New York and Penn- 
sylvania. New York is the center of your 
banking system. Pennsylvania is the center of 
your steel industry. Those are two of your 
most important things — banking and steel. 
They form the base of your life. They make 
you what you are. Now if you really believe 
in your banking system, and respect it, why 
don't you send Mr. Morgan to your United 
States Senate? And if you really believe in 
your steel industry, in its present organization, 
why don't you send Mr. Schwab to the Sen- 
ate? Why do you send men who know little 
about banking and less about steel and who 
protect the bankers and the steel manufactur- 
ers and pretend to be independent of them? 
It is inefficient. It is insincere. You refuse 
to recognize the fact that the real control is no 
longer political. That is why I say that your 
system is lacking in integrity. That is why 



142 LENIN 

our system is superior to yours. That is why 
it will destroy yours." 

"Frankly, Mr. Commissioner," said Rob- 
ins, "I don't believe it will." 

"It will," said Lenin. "Do you know what 
our system is?" 

"Not very well as yet," said Robins. "You've 
just started." 

"I'll tell you," said Lenin. "Our system will 
destroy yours because it will consist of a social 
control which recognizes the basic fact of 
modern life. It recognizes the fact that real 
power to-day is economic, and that the social 
control of to-day must therefore be economic 
also. So what do we do? Who will be our 
representatives in our national legislature, in 
our national Soviet, from the district of Baku, 
for instance? 

"The district of Baku is an oil country. Oil 
makes Baku. Oil rules Baku. Our represen- 
tatives from Baku will be elected by the oil 
industry. They will be elected by the work- 



RAYMOND ROBINS 143 

ers in the oil industry. You say, Who are 
the workers? I say, The men who manage 
and the men who obey the orders of managers, 
the superintendents, the engineers, the artisans, 
the manual laborers — all the persons who are 
actually engaged in the actual work of pro- 
duction, by brain or hand — they are the work- 
ers. Persons not so engaged — persons who are 
not at labor in the oil industry but who try to 
live off it without labor, by speculation, by 
royalties, by investment unaccompanied by 
any work of daily toil — they are not workers. 
They may know something about oil, or they 
may not. Usually they do not. In any case, 
they are not engaged in the actual producing 
of oil. Our republic is a producers' republic. 
"You will say that your republic is a citi- 
zens? republic. Very well. I say that the man 
as producer is more important than the man 
as citizen. The most important citizens in 
your oil districts — who are they? Are they 
not oil men? We will represent Baku as oil. 



i 44 LENIN 

"Similarly we will represent the Donetz 
coal basin as coal. The representatives from 
the Donetz basin will be representatives of the 
coal industry. Again, from the country dis- 
tricts, our representatives will be representa- 
tives chosen by peasants who grow crops. 
What is the real interest of the country dis- 
tricts? It is not store-keeping. It is not 
money-lending. It is agriculture. From our 
country districts our Soviets of peasants will 
send representatives chosen by agriculture to 
speak for agriculture. 

"This system is stronger than yours because 
it fits in with reality. It seeks out the sources 
of daily human work-value and, out of those 
sources, directly, it creates the social control 
of the State. Our Government will be an eco- 
nomic social control for an economic age. It 
will triumph because it speaks the spirit, and 
releases and uses the spirit, of the age that 
now is. 

"Therefore, Colonel Robins, we look with 



RAYMOND ROBINS 145 

confidence to the future. You may destroy us 
in Russia. You may destroy the Russian Revo- 
lution in Russia. You may overthrow me. It 
will make no difference. A hundred years ago 
the monarchies of Britain, Prussia, Austria, 
Russia overthrew the Government of Revolu- 
tionary France. They restored a monarch, 
who was called a legitimate monarch, to power 
in Paris. But they could not stop, and they 
did not stop, the middle-class political revolu- 
tion, the revolution of middle-class democracy, 
which had been started in Paris by the men 
of the French Revolution of 1 789. They could 
not save feudalism. 

"Every system of feudal aristocratic social 
control in Europe was destined to be destroyed 
by the political democratic social control 
worked out by the French Revolution. Every 
system of political democratic social control in 
the world to-day is destined now to be de- 
stroyed by the economic producers' social con- 
trol worked out by the Russian Revolution. 



146 LENIN 

"Colonel Robins, you do not believe it. I 
have to wait for events to convince you. You 
may see foreign bayonets parading across Rus- 
sia. You may see the Soviets, and all the lead- 
ers of the Soviets, killed. You may see Russia 
dark again as it was dark before. But the 
lightning out of that darkness has destroyed 
political democracy everywhere. It has de- 
stroyed it not by physically striking it but 
simply by one flash of revealment of the fu- 
ture." 

5. Lenin Adapts Programme to Facts 

On the very night on which he came into 
power, at Petrograd, Lenin spoke in the All- 
Russian Congress of Soviets on the decree re- 
garding land. He said, in effect: 

"You will notice, comrades, that in many 
ways this is not our decree. In many ways 
this is the decree of some of our political oppo- 
nents. But we have taken into consideration 
the answers given by the peasants to the ques- 



RAYMOND ROBINS 147 

tions sent out to them. We cannot settle the 
problem of the land without regard for the 
ideas of the peasants. Time alone can tell, life 
alone can tell, whether we are right or they 
are right. In the meantime we must remem- 
ber that we cannot impose our ideas when it 
is impossible to impose them. We must keep 
our ideas to put into force when we can, not 
when we can't." 

Some months later, when Lenin was re- 
proached for failing to carry out the nationali- 
zation of all industries more rapidly, he ex- 
pressed himself to his critics in some such 
words as these: 

"What would you have? I cannot make a 
Revolution anything but a Revolution. Our 
task a few months ago was to bring the Revo- 
lution in. Now we have to make the Revo- 
lution work. The formula then was: 'All 
Power to the Soviet.' The formula now is: 
'Labor Discipline.' " 

He went on then to the writing of his mes- 



148 LENIN 

sage in which he said that all persons not work- 
ing must be obliged to work, and that middle- 
class specialists must be hired, at any salaries 
necessary, to give technical direction to the 
factories of Soviet Russia. His critics took 
him to task at a great meeting of Soviet repre- 
sentatives. The hall was filled for hours with 
cries of "Bourgeois Lenin" and "Czar Lenin," 
from the extremists of the Left, and with seri- 
ous hostile arguments from speakers moderate 
but alarmed. 

At the end, when the night was far spent, 
Lenin rose to reply. He said that all the argu- 
ments made against him could be divided into 
a certain number of classes. He would an- 
swer them class by class. He proceeded to do 
so. He spoke for perhaps half an hour. He 
got a vote of confidence as unmistakable as the 
vote from the Red Guards in his office at Pet- 
rograd. Then he went back to the Kremlin 
and continued to pursue his policy of "Labor 
Discipline." 



RAYMOND ROBINS 149 

He said: 

"I will cause a sufficient number of men to 
work a sufficient number of hours at a suffi- 
cient rate of speed to produce what Russia re- 
quires." 

It was a sufficiently Russian remark. 

One day a man — an American — came to 
Robins in great trouble. "I'm going to be 
ruined," he said. 

"How? Where?" said Robins. 

"My factory." 

"Won't your men work?" 

"Certainly they work. We're getting ten to 
twenty per cent more product per man under 
Lenin than we did under Kerensky." 

"Well, what's your complaint?" 

"Listen! This workers' control may be all 
right in the factory. But now they're going 
to put it into the buying and selling. They're 
going to put it into the office. It's all wrong 
in the office. It won't go. But they've sent us 
an ultimatum. I tell you it'll kill us." 



i 5 o LENIN 

"I agree with you," said Robins. "What do 
you want me to do?" 

"Well, they say you can see Lenin. See 
him." 

Lenin listened while Robins told him that 
this American company certainly has a lot of 
manufacturing knowledge, and that it is will- 
ing to go on using that knowledge in Russia 
and giving Russia the benefit of it if only the 
Bolshevik Government will compromise and 
not insist on putting workers' control into the 
office. 

The compromise was made. Lenin wrote 
out an order stopping the putting of workers' 
control into the office. 

Robins met the manager of that factory 
some time later, and asked him how he was 
getting on. 

"All right," said he. "First-rate." 

"Going to keep on?" 

"Sure." 

"Tell me, If you get out of Russia, who 



RAYMOND ROBINS 151 

will take your place making harvesters for 
Russia?" 

"Why, some German." 

"Of course," said Robins. Robins' advice 
was: "Stay in Russia. Stick. Russia has a 
Revolution. Lenin did not make it. He has 
led it, but he did not make it. Yet he does 
lead it. And he leads it, all the time, as much 
as he can, toward work — toward the task of 
actually earning a living in a living world. He 
is calling for engineering advisers now, for fac- 
tory managers. To get them he is willing to 
negotiate, and he has tried to negotiate with 
foreign 'bourgeois' governments, and espe- 
cially with the United States. To get them he 
is willing to compromise, just as he has com- 
promised with my American business man. 
If we break with him altogether he will find 
it more and more difficult to make his Govern- 
ment compromise with American business 
men. If we go away altogether, and leave 
Russia, he will make his compromises and get 



152 LENIN 

his factory managers where he can — and the 
quickest and easiest place is Germany. To 
fight Lenin is to play the German game." 

6. Lenin Shows how to Preserve Law and 

Order 

Lenin, by April of 1918, had two immediate 
aims : work and order. About the middle of 
April, Robins went to see Lenin and said to 
him: 

"About this May Day parade on the first 
of May. My men tell me there is going to 
be a lot of trouble. Why do you have the par- 
ade? It will cost a lot of money; and Russia 
is hungry and poor, and there will be shooting 
and murdering. Besides, what has it got to 
do with work?" 

Lenin looked really quite surprised. 

"We have to have work," he said, "but we 
have to have May Day. On every May Day 
past, for many years, we marched in honor of 



RAYMOND ROBINS 153 

the Revolution to come. Now, on the first 
May Day of the Soviet Republic, we march 
for the first time in honor of the Revolution 
accomplished. It has to be. We may march 
without shoes, but we will march." 

Robins, however, persisted and went to see 
Lenin again, later in the month. He said to 
Lenin : 

"It's just as I told you. There's going to be 
trouble. I'll give you just one case. My men 
saw a coffin being carried into a building on 
the line of march. Then they saw another cof- 
fin going into that same building. They kept 
on watching, and the coffins kept on coming; 
and now there are seven coffins in that build- 
ing. And my men have taken a look at them 
inside. They're not coffins. They're machine- 
guns. That's what's going to happen." 

Lenin, rather wearily, scratched some words 
on a piece of paper. Robins thought it was 
an order to capture and confiscate the machine- 
guns. It turned out to be much more. 



154 LENIN 

On the afternoon of April 30th, Robins 
was in his room in the Hotel Europe. 
Some men came in. They closed the windows 
and sealed the fastenings of the windows. 
They warned Robins against breaking the 
seals till the parade next day was over. A 
regulation had been issued. It had been issued 
to the legally responsible "house committee" 
of every house along the line of march. Should 
a shot be fired at the parade by anybody in 
that house, then the whole "house committee" 
would be arrested and tried. 

On the next day 42,000 people marched nine 
miles through a city filled with revolution- 
ists and counter-revolutionists. Not a shot 
was fired, and not one man or woman was 
hurt. 

It was a holiday; it was a workless day; but 
Lenin, after all, had not been able to forget 
work. He had caused certain words to be dis- 
played conspicuously everywhere. They met 
Robins' eyes all day long. To Moscow cele- 



RAYMOND ROBINS 155 

brating the joyous overthrow of capitalism, 
these words everywhere said: "Labor Disci- 
pline," "Labor Discipline/' "Labor Disci- 
pline." 

Such is the temperament of Lenin the ruler, 
in working pursuit of his economic social-con- 
trol state. 

7. Potency of Soviet Idea Source of Lenin's 
Power — Not Physical Force 

In addressing a meeting of American busi- 
ness men Robins said : 

"Gentlemen, the people who tell you that 
the Soviet system is nothing but riots and rob- 
beries and mobs and massacres are leading you 
to your own destruction. They are giving you 
your enemy's wrong address and starting you 
off on an expedition which can never reach him 
and never hurt him. To hurt Bolshevism you 
need at least to get its number. Bolshevism is 
a system which in practice, on its record, can 



156 LENIN 

put human beings, in millions, into an ordered 
social group, and can get loyalty from them 
and obedience and organized consent, some- 
times by free will, sometimes by compulsion, 
but always in furtherance of an organized idea 
— an idea thought out and worked out and liv- 
ing in human thought and human purpose as 
the plan of a city not yet made with hands but 
already blue-printed, street by street, to be the 
millennial city of assembled mankind. 

"Gentlemen, it is a real fight. We have to 
fight it with the weapons with which it can be 
fought. Against idea there must be idea. 
Against millennial plan there must be millen- 
nial plan. Against self-sacrifice to a dream 
there must be self-sacrifice to a higher and 
nobler dream. Do you say that Lenin is noth- 
ing but Red Guards? Gentlemen, let me tell 
you something. I have seen a little piece of 
paper with some words on it by Nikolai Lenin 
read and re-read, and then instantly and scru- 
pulously obeyed in Russian cities thousands of 



RAYMOND ROBINS 157 

miles beyond the last Red Guard in Lenin's 
army." 

Robins was alluding to his experience on 
his way out from Russia back to the United 
States. He left Moscow on May 14, 1918, 
with a Bolshevik pass, but also with five rifles 
and one hundred and fifty rounds of ammu- 
nition in his special car. The rifles and the 
ammunition were the property of the Soviet 
Government. To get them Robins had to get 
a most special permit. He went to the Soviet 
Government and got the permit, and went 
around to say good-by to his friends and ac- 
quaintances in Moscow. He told them he was 
going out by Vladivostok. 

"What?" said the experts in boulevard up- 
per-world underground information. "What? 
Going out by Vladivostok? Not by Archan- 
gel? Not by Murmansk? Not by Finland? 
Do you mean it? By Siberia? My dear man, 
don't you know that Lenin stops having any 
say-so about anything at all when you get to 



i 5 8 LENIN 

a point 500 miles east of here? Don't you 
know that all Siberia is overrun with Soviets 
who pay no attention to Lenin, and with brig- 
ands who pay no attention to the Soviets? 
Don't you know that the Soviets and the brig- 
ands between them will take all your money 
and probably all your clothes?" 

"No, I do not," said Robins. He was weary 
of answering such questions in any other way. 
"No, I do not," he said, and boarded his train. 

He got to Vladivostok. He got there in a 
running time only a few hours greater than 
would have been consumed by the running 
time of the Siberian Railway under the old 
regime. He himself has seen the Siberian 
Railway under the Kerensky regime. The 
Bolsheviks were doing better by it. There was 
less clutter. There was more energy. Inci- 
dentally there was food at every station. And, 
above all, the local governments were not 
raising their heads against Lenin as they had 
raised them against Kerensky. 



1 jtfnffi>&] 

•tjf^yriv abasia 









President People's Commissioners, Moscow, Kremlin 

5/11/1918- 
To All Councils of Deputies and Other Soviet Organizations: 
I beg you to give every kind of assistance to Colonel Robins 
and other members of the American Red Cross Mission for 
an unhindered and speediest journey from Moscow to Vladi- 
vostok President C. P. C, 
vosroK ' V. Ulianov (Lenin). 



160 LENIN 

In 19 1 7, when Robins came into Russia 
through Siberia, the Red Cross Mission with 
which he traveled was stopped at Chita by a 
local government, and had to run by stealth 
through Krasnoyarsk in order to avoid being 
stopped by a local government there. In 1 9 1 8, 
when Robins came out of Russia, his Red 
Cross car was stopped nowhere. Nowhere did 
any local government interrupt it. Nowhere 
did any local government, after Robins had 
shown his credentials from Moscow, even at- 
tempt to examine it. 

Between Moscow and Vladivostok Robins 
passed through fifteen different successive 
Soviet jurisdictions. At the first town within 
each jurisdiction there would be a commis- 
sioner and a platoon of soldiers. They would 
start going through the train to which Robins' 
car was attached. They would arrest persons 
whom they called rebels — counter-revolution- 
aries. They would confiscate property — 
vodka, for instance, and rifles — which they 



RAYMOND ROBINS 161 

called contraband. Robins had no vodka, but 
he had rifles. Moreover, he was a bourgeois. 
According to the boulevards he was entitled 
to be shot at sight by any true Soviet any- 
where. Nevertheless, he would venture to 
show the Commissioner a certain paper. The 
Commissioner would sit in Robins' car, with 
his soldiers outside, and read this paper. Hav- 
ing read it, he would rise and bow, and say, 
"Please, thank you, good-day." And that 
would be the last Robins ever saw of him; and 
the soldiers never came into the car, and noth- 
ing in the car was ever examined or censored 
or in any way subjected to any local stoppage, 
interference or scrutiny. 

The paper was a wish by Lenin. He could 
not physically enforce it; because at that time 
his Red Army was not large enough to reach 
so far; but it was a wish by Lenin. It said in 
effect that courtesy to Colonel Robins of the 
American Red Cross was desired by Lenin. It 
bore the words Vladimir I. Ulianov, and then 



162 LENIN 

in parentheses the word Lenin. It was enough. 

It was enough on the Volga, and it was 
enough on the Amur. On the Amur, at Kha- 
barovsk, Robins came to a Soviet farther away 
from Moscow than any other Soviet on Rus- 
sian soil. It was "The Soviet of the Far 
Eastern District," bordering the Arctic, bor- 
dering the Pacific. Its President Commis- 
sioner, A. M. Krasnoschchekov, read Lenin's 
letter, and at once, in due form, gave Colonel 
Robins of the American Red Cross the official 
freedom of the city of Khabarovsk and took 
him to attend a conference of the local Coun- 
cil, of People's Commissioners, since Lenin 
wished him to have courtesy. On the Amur, 
four thousand five hundred miles beyond the 
farthest line then reached by any soldier in 
Lenin's Guard, Lenin's name was enough. It 
was the name of the Revolution, of the Soviet 
idea, of the Soviet system. 

At Vladivostok Robins took his rifles and 
his cartridges and surrendered them to the 



RAYMOND ROBINS 163 

Vladivostok Soviet. He had not fired one 
shot. He had not read one shot fired by any- 
body else. 

That was Siberia of the Bolsheviks. To- 
day in Siberia the anti-Bolshevik ruler Kol- 
chak cannot get obedience from the Siberian 
population and cannot keep the Siberian Rail- 
way for one day free from raiders and ma- 
rauders without the help of scores of thou- 
sands of foreign Allied and Associated troops. 
In May of 191 8 a letter from Lenin, without 
even a headquarters policeman behind it, could 
send a car across all Siberia from Cheliabinsk 
to Vladivostok unmolested and unsearched, 
and could get from every local governmental 
capital an immediate response of loyal fellow- 
ship. 



LENIN IN 1919 



LENIN IN 1919 
By Arthur Ransome 

/. Lenin's Views of George Bernard Shaw 
and the Revolution in England 

WHATEVER else they may think of him, not 
even his enemies deny that Vladimir Ilyich 
Ulianov (Lenin) is one of the greatest per- 
sonalities of his time. I therefore make no 
apology for writing down such scraps of his 
conversation as seem to me to illustrate his 
manner of mind. 

He was talking of the lack of thinkers in 
the English labor movement and said he re- 
membered hearing Shaw speak at some meet- 
ing. Shaw, he said, was "a good man fallen 

167 



168 LENIN 

among Fabians" and a great deal further Left 
than his company. He had not heard of "The 
Perfect Wagnerite," but was interested when 
I told him the general idea of the book, and 
turned fiercely on an interpreter who said that 
Shaw was a clown. "He may be a clown for 
the bourgeoisie in a bourgeois state, but they 
would not think him a clown in a revolution." 

He asked whether Sydney Webb was con- 
sciously working in the interests of the capi- 
talists, and when I said I was quite sure that 
he was not, he said: "Then he has more in- 
dustry than brains. He certainly has great 
knowledge." 

He was entirely convinced that England was 
on the eve of revolution and pooh-poohed my 
objections. "Three months ago I thought it 
would end in all the world having to fight the 
center of reaction in England. I do not think 
so now. Things have gone further there than 
in France, if the news as to the extent of the 
strikes is true." 



ARTHUR RANSOME 169 

I pointed out some of the circumstances, 
geographical and economical, which would 
make the success of a violent revolution in 
England problematical in the extreme, and 
put to him the same suggestion that I put to 
Bukharin, namely, that a suppressed move- 
ment in England would be worse for Russia 
than our traditional method of compromise. 
He agreed at once, but said: "That is quite 
true, but you cannot stop a revolution . . . 
although Ramsay Macdonald will try to at the 
last minute. Strikes and Soviets. If these two 
habits once get hold, nothing will keep the 
workmen from them. And Soviets, once 
started, must sooner or later come to supreme 
power." Then: "But certainly it would be 
much more difficult in England. Your big 
clerk and shopkeeping class would oppose it, 
until the workmen broke them. Russia was 
indeed the only country in which the revolu- 
tion could start. And we are not yet through 
our troubles with the peasantry." 



i 7 o LENIN 

I suggested that one reason why it had been 
possible in Russia was that they had room to 
retreat. 

"Yes," he said. "The distances saved us. 
The Germans were frightened of them, at the 
time when they could have eaten us up, and 
won peace, which the Allies would have given 
them in gratitude for our destruction. A revo- 
lution in England would have nowhere 
whither to retire." 

Of the Soviets he said : "In the beginning I 
thought they were and would remain a purely 
Russian form; but it is now quite clear that 
under various names they must be the instru- 
ments of revolution everywhere." 

2. Lenin's Opinion of Colonel Raymond 
Robins, De Leon and Others 

He expressed the opinion that in England 
they would not allow me to tell the truth about 
Russia, and gave as an example the way in 



ARTHUR RANSOME 171 

which Colonel Robins had been kept silent in 
America. He asked about Robins, "Had he 
really been as friendly to the Soviet govern- 
ment as he made out?" I said: "Yes, if only 
as a sportsman admiring its pluck and cour- 
age in difficulties." I quoted Robins' saying: 
"I can't go against a baby I have sat up with 
for six months. But if there were a Bolshevik 
movement in America I'd be out with my rifle 
to fight it every time." "Now that," said 
Lenin, "is an honest man and more far-seeing 
than most. I always liked that man." He 
shook with laughter at the image of the baby, 
and said, "That baby had several million other 
folk sitting up with it, too." 

He said he had read in an English Socialist 
paper a comparison of his own theories with 
those of an American, Danel De Leon. He 
had then borrowed some of De Leon's pamph- 
lets from Reinstein (who belongs to the party 
which De Leon founded in America), read 
them for the first time, and was amazed to see 



i 7 2 LENIN 

how far and how early De Leon had pursued 
the same train of thought as the Russians. His 
theory that representation should be by indus- 
tries, not by areas, was already the germ of the 
Soviet system. He remembered seeing De 
Leon at an International Conference. De 
Leon made no impression at all, a gray old 
man, quite unable to speak to such an audi- 
ence, but evidently a much bigger man than he 
looked, since his pamphlets were written be- 
fore the experience of the Russian Revolution 
of 1905. Some days afterwards I noticed that 
Lenin had introduced a few phrases of De 
Leon, as if to do honor to his memory, into the 
draft of the new programme of the Commu- 
nist Party. 

Talking of the lies that are told about Rus- 
sia, he said it was interesting to notice that they 
were mostly perversions of the truth and not 
pure inventions, and gave as an example the 
recent story that he had recanted. "Do you 
know the origin of that?" he said. "I was 



ARTHUR RANSOME 173 

wishing a happy New Year to a friend over 
the telephone, and said, 'And may we commit 
fewer stupidities this year than last!' Some- 
one overheard it and told someone else. A 
newspaper announced, 'Lenin says we are 
committing stupidities,' and so the story 
started." 

3. Sources of Lenin's Poise and Happiness 

More than ever, Lenin struck me as a happy 
man. Walking home from the Kremlin, I 
tried to think of any other man of his caliber 
who had a similar joyous temperament. I 
could think of none. This little, bald-headed, 
wrinkled man, who tilts his chair this way and 
that, laughing over one thing or another, ready 
any minute to give serious advice to anyone 
who interrupts him to ask for it, advice so well 
reasoned that it is to his followers far more 
compelling than any command — every one of 
his wrinkles is a wrinkle of laughter, not of 



L. 



i 7 4 LENIN 

worry. I think the reason must be that he is 
the first great leader who utterly discounts the 
value of his own personality. He is quite 
without personal ambition. More than that, 
he believes, as a Marxist, in the movement of 
the masses which, with or without him, would 
still move. His whole faith is in the elemental 
forces that move people; his faith in himself 
is merely his belief that he justly estimates the 
direction of these forces. 

Lenin does not believe that any man could 
make or stop the Revolution which he thinks 
inevitable. If the Russian Revolution fails, 
according to him, it fails only temporarily, and 
because of forces beyond any man's control. 
He is consequently free with a freedom no 
other great man has ever had. It is not so 
much what he says that inspires confidence in 
him. It is this sensible freedom, this obvious 
detachment. With his philosophy he cannot 
for a moment believe that one man's mistake 
might ruin all. He is, for himself at any rate, 



ARTHUR RANSOME 175 

the exponent, not the cause, of the events that 
will be forever linked with this name. 



4- Lenin's Popularity at the Third 
International 

The meeting March 3d was in a smallish 
room in the Kremlin, with a dais at one end, 
in the old Courts of Justice built in the time 
of Catherine the Second, who would certainly 
have turned in her grave if she had known the 
use to which it was being put. Two very 
smart soldiers of the Red Army were guarding 
the doors. The whole room, including the 
floor, was decorated in red. There were ban- 
ners with "Long Live the Third Internation- 
al" inscribed upon them in many languages. 
The Praesidium was on the raised dais at the 
end of the room, Lenin sitting in the middle 
behind a long red-covered table, with Al- 
brecht, a young German Spartacist, on the 
right, and Platten, the Swiss, on the left. The 



176 LENIN 

auditorium sloped down to the foot of the dais 
Chairs were arranged on each side of an al- 
leyway down the middle, and the four or five 
front rows had little tables for convenience 
in writing. Everybody of importance was 
there. 

Trotzky, in a leather coat, military breeches 
and gaiters, with a fur hat with the sign of the 
Red Army in front, was looking very well, but 
a strange figure for those who had known him 
as one of the greatest anti-militarists in Eu- 
rope. Lenin sat quietly listening, speaking 
when necessary in almost every European 
language with astonishing ease. Balabanova 
talked about Italy and seemed happy at last, 
even in Soviet Russia, to be once more in a 
"secret meeting." It was really an extraordi- 
nary affair, and, in spite of some childishness, 
I could not help realizing that I was present 
at something that will go down in the histories 
of Socialism, much like that other strange 
meeting convened in London in 1848. 



ARTHUR RANSOME 177 

March 6th. — The conference in the Krem- 
lin ended with the usual singing and a photo- 
graph. Some time before the end, when 
Trotzky had just finished speaking and had 
left the tribune, there was a squeal of protest 
from the photographer who had just trained 
his apparatus. Someone remarked, "The dic- 
tatorship of the photographer," and, amid gen- 
eral laughter, Trotzky had to return to the 
tribune and stand silent while the unabashed 
photographer took two pictures. The found- 
ing of the Third International had been pro- 
claimed in the morning papers, and an extraor- 
dinary meeting in the Great Theater an- 
nounced for the evening. 

I got to the theater at about five, and had 
difficulty in getting in, though I had a special 
ticket as a correspondent. There were queues 
outside all the doors. The Moscow Soviet was 
there, the Executive Committee, representa- 
tives of the trade unions and the factory com- 
mittees, etc. The huge theater and the plat- 



178 LENIN 

form were crammed, people standing in the 
aisles, and even packed close together in the 
wings of the stage. Kamenev opened the meet- 
ing by a solemn announcement of the founding 
of the Third International in the Kremlin. 
There was a roar of applause from the audi- 
ence, which rose and sang the "International" 
in a way that I have never heard it sung since 
the All-Russian Assembly when the news came 
of the strikes in Germany during the Brest 
negotiations. 

Kamenev then spoke of those who had died 
on the way, mentioning Liebknecht and Rosa 
Luxemburg, and the whole theater stood again 
while the orchestra played "You Fell as Vic- 
tims." Then Lenin spoke. If I had ever 
thought that Lenin was losing his personal 
popularity, I got my answer now. It was a 
long time before he could speak at all, every- 
body standing and drowning his attempts to 
speak with roar after roar of applause. It was 
an extraordinary, overwhelming scene, tier 



ARTHUR RANSOME 179 

after tier crammed with workmen, the parterre 
filled, the whole platform and the wings. A 
knot of workwomen were close to me, and 
they almost fought to see him, and shouted as 
if each one were determined that he should 
hear her in particular. He spoke as usual, in 
the simplest way, emphasizing the fact that 
the revolutionary struggle everywhere was 
forced to use the Soviet forms. "We declare 
our solidarity with the aims of the Soviets," 
he read from an Italian paper, and added, 
"and that was when they did not know what 
our aims were, and before we had an estab- 
lished programme ourselves." Albrecht made 
a very long reasoned speech for the Sparta- 
cans, which was translated by Trotzky. Guil- 
beau, seemingly a mere child, spoke of the So- 
cialist movement in France. Steklov was 
translating him when I left. You must re- 
member that I had nearly two years of such 
meetings and am not a Russian. When I got 
outside the theater I found at each door a dis- 



180 LENIN 

appointed crowd that had been unable to 
get in. 

The proceedings finished up next day with a 
review in the Red Square and a general holi- 
day. 

5. Revolution Caused by Economic Con- 
ditions, not by Propaganda 

I went to see Lenin the day after the Review 
in the Red Square and the general holiday in 
honor of the Third International. The first 
thing he said was: "I am afraid that the jin- 
goes in England and France will make use of 
yesterday's doings as an excuse for further ac- 
tion against us. They will say, 'How can we 
leave them in peace when they set about set- 
ting the world on fire?' To that I would an- 
swer: We are at war, messieurs! And just as 
during your war you tried to make revolution 
in Germany, and Germany did her best to 
make trouble in Ireland and India, so we, 



ARTHUR RANSOME 181 

while we are at war with you, adopt the meas- 
ures that are open to us. We have told you 
we are willing to make peace." 

He spoke of Chicherin's last note, and said 
they based all their hopes on it. Balfour had 
said somewhere, "Let the fire burn itself out." 
That would not do. But the quickest way of 
restoring good conditions in Russia was, of 
course, peace and agreement with the Allies. 
"I am sure we could come to terms, if they 
want to come to terms at all. England and 
America would be willing, perhaps, if their 
hands were not tied by France. But interven- 
tion in the large sense can now hardly be. They 
must have learned that Russia could never be 
governed as India is governed, and that send- 
ing troops here is the same thing as sending 
them to a Communist university." 

I said something about the general hostility 
to their propaganda noticeable in foreign 
countries. 
Lenin : "Let them build a Chinese wall round 






182 LENIN 

each of their countries. They have their cus- 
toms officers, their frontiers, their coast guards. 
They can expel any Bolsheviks they wish. 
Revolution does not depend on propaganda. 
If the conditions of revolution are not there 
no sort of propaganda will either hasten or im- 
pede it. The war has brought about those con- 
ditions in all countries, and I am convinced 
that if Russia were to be swallowed up by the 
sea, were to cease to exist altogether, the Revo- 
lution in the rest of Europe would go on. Put 
Russia under water for twenty years, and you 
would not affect by a shilling or an hour a 
week the demands of the shop-stewards in 
England." 

I told him, what I have told most of them 
many times, that I did not believe there would 
be a revolution in England. 

Lenin: "We have a saying that a man may 
have typhoid while still on his legs. Twenty, 
maybe thirty, years ago I had abortive ty- 
phoid, and was going about with it, had had 



ARTHUR RANSOME 183 

it some days before it knocked me over. Well, 
England and France and Italy have caught 
the disease already. England may seem to 
you to be untouched, but the microbe is already 
there." 

I said that just as his typhoid was abortive 
typhoid, so the disturbances in England to 
which he alluded might well be abortive revo- 
lution and come to nothing. I told him the 
vague, disconnected character of the strikes 
and the generally Liberal as opposed to Social- 
ist character of the movement, so far as it was 
political at all, reminded me of what I had 
heard of 1905 in Russia and not at all of 1917, 
and that I was sure it would settle down. 

Lenin: "Yes, that is possible. It is, per- 
haps, an educative period, in which the Eng- 
lish workmen will come to realize their politi- 
cal needs and turn from Liberalism to Social- 
ism. Socialism is certainly weak in England. 
Your Socialist movements, your Socialist par- 
ties . . . when I was in England I zealously 



184 LENIN 

attended everything I could, and for a country 
with so large an industrial population they 
were pitiable, pitiable ... a handful at a 
street corner ... a meeting in a drawing- 
room ... a school class . . . pitiable. But 
you must remember one great difference be- 
tween Russia of 1905 and England to-day. Our 
first Soviet in Russia was made during the 
Revolution. Your shop-stewards' committees 
have been in existence long before. They are 
without programme, without direction, but the 
opposition they will meet will force a pro- 
gramme upon them." 

Speaking of the expected visit of the Berne 
delegation, he asked me if I knew Macdonald, 
whose name had been substituted for that of 
Henderson in later telegrams announcing their 
coming. He said: "I am very glad Mac- 
donald is coming instead of Henderson. Of 
course, Macdonald is not a Marxist in any 
sense of the word, but he is at least interested 
in theory, and can therefore be trusted to do 



ARTHUR RANSOME 185 

his best to understand what is happening here. 
More than that we do not ask." 



6. Lenin's Views on Property and Class 
Struggle 

He then talked a little on a subject that in- 
terests me very much, namely, the way in 
which insensibly, quite apart from war, the 
Communist theories are being modified in the 
difficult process of their translation into prac- 
tice. We talked of the changes in "workers' 
control," which is now a very different thing 
from the wild committee business that at first 
made work almost impossible. We talked 
then of the antipathy of the peasants to com- 
pulsory communism, and how that idea also 
had been considerably whittled away. I asked 
him what were going to be the relations be- 
tween the Communists of the towns and the 
property-loving peasants, and whether there 
was not great danger of antipathy between 



1 86 LENIN 

them, and said I regretted leaving too soon to 
see the elasticity of the Communist theories 
tested by the inevitable pressure of the peas- 
antry. 

Lenin said that in Russia there was a pretty 
sharp distinction between the rich peasants 
and the poor. "The only opposition we have 
here in Russia is directly or indirectly due to 
the rich peasants. The poor, as soon as they 
are liberated from the political domination of 
the rich, are on our side and are in an enor- 
mous majority." 

I said that would not be so in the Ukraine, 
where property among the peasants is much 
more equally distributed. 

Lenin: "No. And there, in the Ukraine, 
you will certainly see our policy modified. 
Civil war, whatever happens, is likely to be 
more bitter in the Ukraine than elsewhere, be- 
cause there the instinct of property has been 
further developed in the peasantry, and the 
minority and majority will be more equal." 



ARTHUR RANSOME 187 

He asked me if I meant to return, saying 
that I could go down to Kiev to watch the 
Revolution there as I had watched it in Mos- 
cow. I said I should be very sorry to think 
that this was my last visit to the country which 
I love only second to my own. He laughed, 
and paid me the compliment of saying that 
"although English," I had more or less suc- 
ceeded in understanding what they were at, 
and that he should be pleased to see me again. 



CONSERVATIVE OPINIONS 
ON LENIN 



CONSERVATIVE OPINIONS 
. ON LENIN 

/. "New York Times" upon the Report of 
Lenin's Death, Sept. 2, IQl8 

"Lenin was the most remarkable of the 
personalities brought by the world-war into 
prominence from obscurity. By many he has 
been regarded as the mere paid agent of Ger- 
many. Of this no proof has ever been forth- 
coming. An American, more or less in sym- 
pathy with his doctrines, who had rare oppor- 
tunities of studying Lenin at close range, de- 
scribed him as 'the greatest living statesman 
in Europe.' It was a striking tribute to the 
personality of the man. 

". . . He endeavored to put into practice 
theories which he had been preaching for 
many years before the Russian Revolution 

191 



i 9 2 LENIN 

came to pass. In those years he conceived 
and worked out in his mind a principle of so- 
cial revolution which distinguished him from 
other Socialist thinkers by his uncompromis- 
ing appeal to the spirit of class revolt. 

"This spirit as an indispensable weapon in 
the construction of an ideal Socialist state he 
preached with increasing fervor as years went 
by, supplementing it . . . with something 
that was essentially lacking in the Marxian 
doctrine, namely, a political design under 
which the economic aims of a thorough- 
going Socialism might be put in effect. This 
political design found its expression, so far 
as it has gone, in the present Soviet govern- 
ment." 

2. Frank Vanderlip 

"The personal picture of Lenin, with whicK 
I have found no disagreement in speaking 
with a number of people who are well in- 



CONSERVATIVE OPINIONS 193 

formed, is that he is a man of most extraordi- 
nary ability, and with some truly fine charac- 
teristics. He was a Russian idealistic noble 
and came to be a man of only one idea. He 
believed that the regime of capitalism meant 
slavery and that the world would find free- 
dom in a communistic state of society. In his 
mind every motive was fine, every act moved 
by patriotic love and sympathy for the peo- 
ple." 

J. London "Times" 

"Is Lenin a genius? Many Russians have 
denied it and certainly there is nothing in his 
personal appearance to suggest even faintly a 
resemblance to the super-man. And yet on 
second thoughts there is something in those 
steel gray eyes that arrests the attention, 
something in that quizzing, half-contemptu- 
ous, half-smiling look which speaks of bound- 
less self-confidence and conscious superiority. 



i 9 4 LENIN 

He is certainly by far the greatest intellectual 
force which the Russian Revolution has yet 
brought to light 

"The almost fanatical respect with which 
he is regarded by the men who are his col- 
leagues and who are at least as jealous as poli- 
ticians in other countries is due to other quali- 
ties than mere intellectual capacity. To 
qualities other than mere intellectual force he 
owes his predominating position in his own 
party. Chief of these are his iron courage, 
his grim, relentless determination and his 
complete lack of all self-interest. 

"He has made use of the demagogue's arts, 
but behind all the inconsistencies of his policy, 
the tactics, the maneuvering, there lies a 
deep-rooted plan which he has been turning 
over in his mind for years and which he now 
thinks is ripe for execution. Demagogues 
have no constructive programme. Lenin at 
least knows exactly what he wishes to achieve 
and how he means to achieve it. 



CONSERVATIVE OPINIONS 195 

"In the many attacks that have been made 
against him no breath of scandal has ever 
touched his private life. He is married — 
according to all accounts, singularly happily 
married." 

4. General Von Hoffmann, Who Imposed 
the Brest-Litovsk Treaty on the Soviet 

"It was a little upstart named Lenin that 
defeated Germany. Germany did not play 
with Bolshevism. Bolshevism played with 
Germany. Immediately after conquering the 
Bolsheviks we were conquered by them. Our 
victorious army on the Eastern front became 
rotten with Bolshevism. We got to the point 
where we did not dare to transfer certain of 
our Eastern divisions to the West. Our mili- 
tary machine became the printing-press for 
the Bolsheviks. It was Lenin and the Bol- 
sheviks that broke our morale and gave us de- 
feat and the revolution you now see ruining 
us." 



TWO ADVERSE OPINIONS 



John Spargo in "How Lenin Intrigued 
with Germany" 

"Coldly cynical, crassly materialistic, ut- 
terly unscrupulous, repudiating moral codes 
and sanctions as bourgeois sentimentality, 
Lenin has for many years surrounded himself 
with desperate and shady characters, many of 
them having criminal records. Burtzev 
tells an interesting story which throws a strong 
light upon the unholy alliance between Lenin 
and Malinovsky, the police tool, and almost 
compels one to believe that Lenin was delib- 
erately conniving at the betrayal of his com- 
rades." 



196 



II 



Princess Radziwill in "The Firebrand 
of Bolshevism" 

"There were some who said that Lenin is an 
idealist and that he is honest, too. Lenin is 
neither an idealist nor an honest man. He is 
only an opportunist and an ambitious crea- 
ture. He understands well a certain class of 
Russians, who like empty words and eloquent 
speeches and who never look ahead and never 
care to do so. What he aimed at was to be- 
come the absolute master in a land which he 
believed to be doomed and out of which he 
only hoped to save sufficient wreckage to be 
able to live not only in comfort but also in 
affluence the rest of his natural life. He was 
an exciter of the passions of the mob; he was 
no more of a ruler than Kerensky, and he 
could not even be called a leader of men, 
though he knew how to launch them on a ca- 
reer of crime and plunder." 

197 



LENIN 

By Anise 



LENIN 
By Anise 



In a little room 

* * * 

In the Kremlin 

* * * 

Just off the high court 

* * * 

Of the old CZAR, 

* * * 

In a chair still bearing 

* * * 

The old czar's crest, 

* * * 

Sat LENIN, 

* * # 

A little bald-headed man 

* * * 

Of forty-eight years, 

* * * 

Patient, deliberate, 

* * * 

No lover of WORDS, 

* * * 

But a quiet, shrewd executive 

* * * 

Into whose eyes 

* * * 

The swift, sharp flash 

* * * 

Of a GREAT VISION 

* * ■ * 

Comes for a moment 
$ ♦ * 

And is gone. 

* * * 
Lenin who saw in his youth 



His brother's corpse swing 

out 

* * * 

From the czar's gibbet, 

* * * 

Who saw the PRIEST 

* * * 

Hold up the holy IKON 

* * * 

Blessing the Cossack's rule 

* * * 

Of WHIP and SWORD, 

* * * 

Lenin, the noble 

* * * 

Who swore in that hour 

* * * 

ETERNAL ENMITY 

* * * 

Against the ancient order 
» ♦ * 

And went forth, suspect 

* * * 

To danger and prison 

* * * 

And long, long years of toil 

* * ♦ 

And final TRIUMPH! 

* * v * 

He sat there, calm and sure, 

* * * 

And said: "Colonel Robins, 

* * * 

The REVOLUTION 

* * * 

May FAIL in Russia, 



201 



202 



LENIN 



For we are a primitive land 

* * * 

Forced forward 

* * * 

BEYOND 

* * * 

Our natural pace! 

* * * 

But we will keep alive 

* * * 

The FLAME of revolution 

* * * 

Till the WORLD is alight! 

* * * 

It will come first 

* * * 

In- Bulgaria 

* * * 

And the Bulgars 

* * * 

Will cease fighting. 

* * * 

It will come next 
. * * * 

In Austria 

* * * 

And the Austrians 

* * * 

Will cease fighting, 

* * * 

And THEN it will come 

* * * 

In Germany, 

* * * 

And the power of the kaiser 

* * * 

Will crumble inward. 

* * * 

When the day comes 

* * * 

That a Workers' Council 



Rules in BERLIN 

* * * 

REMEMBER 

* * * 

The little man in the Kremlin, 

* * ♦ 

Who said: "That day 

* * * 

Marks the beginning 

* * * 

Of the NEW WORLD! 

* * * 

Yes, even though the powers 

* * * 

Of ALL the EARTH 

* * * 

Combine to crush us 

* * * 

A* once they joined to crush 

* * * 

The Revolution in France. 

* * * 

Yet as the IDEA 

* * * 

01 the French Revolution 

* * * 

Overthrew at last 

* * * 

The feudal lords of earth, 

* * * 

All its own CONQUERORS, 

* * * 

So shall the IDEA 

Of OUR revolution 

* * * 

Overthrow in the end 

* * * 

OUR CONQUERORS!" 



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